Melania Trump has "the upper hand" in her marriage to Donald, according to explosive new comments from Brigitte Macron. The French First Lady has said that "Melania Trump is very sweet" and "laughs very easily, at everything". However, she added: "When, at a dinner party, she taps on her watch, her husband understands that it is time to get up and leave."
Melania might call she shots, but how much is she worth? While Donald Trump is believed to have a whopping $2.6 billion fortune, his third wife is estimated to be worth $50 million in her own right. But how did she make her money before becoming FLOTUS, and what else do we know about how she continues to rake in the cash today? And, perhaps most interestingly of all, what does she like to spend her megabucks on?
As Macron claims Melania was "constrained" at the White House, read on to take a look inside the lavish lifestyle of Melania Trump. All dollar values in US dollars.
Born Melanija Knavs in 1970 in Novo Mesto, Yugoslavia – now part of Slovenia – the former First Lady had a modest upbringing compared to the lavish lifestyle she leads today. Her father was a car salesman, while her mother worked for a children's clothing company.
Melania showed a passion for fashion from an early age, attending runway shows at the textile factory where her mother worked. She began commercial modeling work at the age of 16 and told People magazine in 2016: "I always loved fashion. My mother was a fashion designer, so it was always in my blood."
Pictured: a young Melania (center) attending a fashion show at her mother's workplace.
Melania attended the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia, where she studied design and architecture. However, she dropped out after her first year to pursue a full-time modeing career.
In the early days, she worked in leading European fashion capitals like Paris and Milan, where she adopted the professional Germanized name "Melania Knauss." Her big break came at the age of 22, when she was chosen as runner-up in the "Look of the Year" contest held by Slovenian women's magazine Jana.
Melania moved to New York City in 1996, where she continued to make waves in the fashion world. At the peak of her career in 2000, she posed for both Sports Illustrated and GQ, and also featured on the covers of fashion titles like Harper’s Bazaar Bulgaria and Vanity Fair Spain.
While working in NYC in 1998, Melania met Donald Trump at a fashion event. After dating for several years, the couple tied the knot at Trump's lavish Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005, and Melania became a US citizen the following year.
Throughout her modeling career, Melania wasn't shy about posing without any clothes on. She took part in a steamy shoot for provocative French magazine Max in 1996, and famously posed for GQ wearing nothing but jewelry while aboard Donald Trump's private jet in 2000.
When Donald was elected president, these explicit images of the new First Lady resurfaced, causing quite a stir. Donald Trump publicly defended his wife, saying: "Melania was one of the most successful models, and she did many photo shoots, including for covers and major magazines. [The Max photo] was a picture taken for a European magazine prior to my knowing Melania. In Europe, pictures like this are very fashionable and common."
Perhaps taking a leaf from her entrepreneurial husband's book, Melania launched her own eponymous jewelry collection in 2010 (pictured).
Her affordable range of gold-tone chains, faux diamond rings, and quartz watches – which retailed for between $30 and $200 – sold on the QVC shopping channel. But bling was just the beginning of Melania's enterprising endeavors...
Melania debuted her eponymous skincare line in 2013. Her luxury caviar-infused creams were launched in high-end department store Lord & Taylor and sold for between $50 and $150. Melania even appeared on an episode of her husband's TV show The Apprentice (pictured), with the contestants tasked with creating an advertising campaign for her products.
After becoming FLOTUS in 2017, Melania shelved both her jewelry and skincare businesses to focus on her new role. But it sounds like this wasn't too much of an income loss for her: an investigation by the Associated Press into her financial filings found that the two businesses collectively pulled in just $15,000 to $50,000 for Melania in 2016.
Her modeling days are behind her, but Melania still rakes in a fortune from her time in front of the camera. It was revealed in 2017 that she earned between $100,000 and $1 million in royalties from old photos on Getty Images.
Melania benefits from a lucrative licensing deal with the image distributor, which includes almost 200 pictures taken by Belgian photographer Régine Mahaux years before the Trumps entered the White House.
There might be pictures aplenty of the former First Lady, but according to reports Melania guards her image closely. The photos that she makes money from can only be used for "positive" coverage and seem to be removed from articles that portray her, or her relationship with Donald, in a less-than-flattering light.
And that's not the only time Melania has taken on the press. In 2017, she sued the owners of the UK's Daily Mail newspaper after it published a story during the 2016 US elections claiming that she had worked as an escort during her modeling days. She won the case, which was held at London's High Court, and the newspaper retracted the claim, issuing an apology.
Melania was seeking a hefty $150 million in damages from the Daily Mail. While the amount she accepted has never been disclosed, sources have suggested she walked away with a significantly smaller sum of just under $3 million, which included legal costs and damages.
In December 2021, in her first major project since leaving the White House, Melania launched her very own non-fungible token (NFT) platform selling digital artworks. Her first offering was a digital watercolor of her eyes by French artist Marc-Antoine Coulon. The image was selling for around $180 apiece, with Melania promising a portion of the sales to her Be Best initiative, which supports children who are aging out of the foster care system.
In January 2022, Melania launched her Head of State NFT collection, which starred the custom-designed white hat that she wore when welcoming French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte to the White House in 2018 (pictured). The collection was sold for $180,000, though Melania has since been accused of buying it herself after the auction flopped.
Melania also launched a collection of NFTs ahead of Independence Day this year. As with her 2021 collection, the former First Lady confirmed an unspecified portion of the proceeds of The 1776 Collection would benefit foster kids.
In July this year, Melania launched yet another collection of NFTs to celebrate the 54th anniversary of the moon landings. Called The Man On The Moon, the collection consists of an unspecified number of tokens, all featuring a rotating graphic of an iPod-like object with a photo of Buzz Aldrin where the screen would be.
The NFTs are available for $75 each, and there are currently 445 available. According to Artnet, there were 479 copies remaining on 20 July, suggesting just 34 were purchased in the first week or so.
It's not just underwhelming sales marring Melania's most recent business venture. It's also been reported that NASA has expressly forbidden the use of its images, including the photograph of Buzz Aldrin, from being used in NFTs.
While the agency generally doesn't copyright its images and makes them freely available for educational purposes, a page on its website states: “NASA is not approving any merchandising applications involving Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), as they are not consistent with the categories of products the agency is approved to merchandise. Further, as stated in the NASA Media Usage Guidelines, NASA does not wish for its images to be used in connection with NFTs."
It's still unclear whether Melania got permission from NASA to use the image, or what the penalty for using it without permission would be. But we do know it's not the only controversy surrounding the wife of the former POTUS in recent weeks: Donald Trump's financial disclosures have also revealed surprising details about how Melania has made money.
Rumors aside, Melania's NFTs were listed as an income source on the first batch of personal financial disclosures that her husband filed earlier this year. Across 101 pages of documents, Donald outlined the money he and his wife have made since he left the White House – although it's worth noting that Trump, who's required to file financial disclosures as a presidential candidate, was allowed to provide broad income ranges rather than exact figures.
The majority of Melania's money came from royalties that she earned through MKT World LLC, her modeling business, which has brought her between $1 million and $5 million since 2021. And according to the documents, Trump's now defunct super political action committee (PAC), Make America Great Again, paid Melania $155,000 that same year. The sum was notionally compensation for speaking engagements, with the money paid in two installments that December.
The disclosures also showed that Melania had been paid $250,000 in "licensing fees" by Winning Team Publishing, the publishing house co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. that has published his father's two post-presidential books.
The filings also revealed that Melania makes money through property investments. The former FLOTUS has reportedly made up to $15,000 in rent from property deals in her native Slovenia since leaving the White House, although it's not clear how many properties she owns or how much they're worth.
Melania's most recent money-maker seems to be a collection of Christmas decorations that she released back in September. Produced in collaboration with the company USA Memorabilia, the 'Red, White and Blue Christmas Collection' consists of five limited edition ornaments (pictured) that each come with a "corresponding digital collectible" (NFT).
According to the product listings, "Former First Lady Melania Trump's signature is included on each ornament; and the ornaments are proudly handcrafted in the United States." Four of the decorations retail for $35 while the star (far left) retails for $45.
Now let's take a look at how Melania likes to splash her cash...
It goes without saying that Melania and Donald have enjoyed many lavish abodes over the years, including his luxury Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and, of course, the White House. But in addition to her real estate investments in Slovenia, the former First Lady has her very own private property in the US too. In 2016, she bought a one-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bathroom apartment on the 33rd floor of Trump Tower in New York City for a cool $1.5 million.
It’s unknown why Melania purchased the property since she already shares the $100 million penthouse apartment in the building with her husband and their son Barron, but it's rumored that she uses the space as a library.
Melania reportedly spent upwards of $1 million on clothing during her tenure as FLOTUS. Among her most expensive looks were a shimmering $7,995 Monique Lhuillier gown (pictured) that she wore to a White House state dinner in 2017 and a $9,590 Michael Kors sequin suit that she wore to Congress that same year.
But the costs of these glam outfits are just a drop in the ocean compared to her most expensive look of all time...
When Melania tied the knot with Trump in 2005, her custom Dior bridal gown reportedly cost a staggering $100,000, making it one of the most expensive wedding dresses of all time.
Weighing in at a whopping 60 pounds, the garment was adorned with 1,500 diamonds and pearls, featured a 13-foot train, and took over 500 hours to create.
The wedding itself, which was held in the ballroom (pictured) at the Trump family's Mar-a-Lago estate, came with a jaw-dropping total price tag of around $2.5 million – accounting for inflation, that's equivalent to over $3.9 million today.
Melania doesn't only have a penchant for expensive clothes – she loves extravagant jewelry too. A $68,500 Cartier Panthère necklace (pictured) and a pair of eye-catching emerald earrings are just some of the stand-out pieces in her enviable collection.
To pull her super stylish outfits and accessories together, Melania has her very own make-up artist and hair stylist. In fact, her long-time MUA Nicole Bryl once told US Weekly that Melania planned to have a "glam room" installed in the White House.
And styling the former FLOTUS can clearly be seriously lucrative. Last year, it was revealed that Melania's hair stylist Hervé Pierre Braillard had received around $132,000 across eight payments from Trump's PAC Save America. Federal Election Commission regulations specifically prohibit presidential candidate committees from spending money on "personal items, including clothing." According to disclosures, however, Braillard received the money for "strategy consulting."
When it comes to relaxation, Melania likes to do it in style. Her go-to getaway location for R&R is the upscale, members-only Trump Spa at Mar-a-Lago (pictured), which offers facilities like massage and pedicure rooms, as well as hair and make-up stations. Melania was reportedly visiting up to twice a day in a bid to unwind during her husband's highly publicized impeachment trial in 2021.
However, during her term as the First Lady, Melania came under fire when it was revealed that she had spent around $64,000 of taxpayer’s money on a spa break to the resort, with the private jet journey alone costing over $16,000 per hour. Between January and April 2017, she reportedly also racked up more than $676,000 in public money flying between Trump Tower, Washington, and Florida, according to Splinter.
Melania's career has seen her move from model to businesswoman to First Lady. However, she reportedly considers her full-time job to be the role of motherhood and has refused over the years to hire a nanny for her son Barron.
But she still splurges in other ways when it comes to her only child. When Barron, now 17, was just seven years old, Melania dressed him in smart suits and used her brand's luxury caviar-infused moisturizer on his skin.
No expense is spared when it comes to Barron's education either. Trump's youngest son has attended Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School and St. Andrew's Episcopal School (pictured), which both cost a hefty $40,000 per year.
Keeping out of the spotlight, Melania is reportedly focusing on "raising and protecting" Barron in the wake of Trump's four indictments. Sources claim the couple is "at war" over whether Barron will get involved in Trump's presidential campaign, with one anonymous insider saying Melania would only allow it to happen "over her dead body."
Like Trump's previous two wives, Marla Maples and the late Ivana, Melania was asked to sign a prenup. Although various reports claimed the marriage was rocky and that Melania would seize the chance to divorce as soon as her husband left the White House, that hasn't proved to be the case – but what are the financial arrangements should the relationship break down?
The terms of the prenup have been shrouded in secrecy, with some legal experts quoted in The Mirror claiming they suspect Donald and Melania would each keep any assets in their own names (in what's called a title control prenup).
Reportedly, it's likely Melania would also receive an additional allowance for their son Barron. When Trump and Ivana divorced in 1992, Ivana received a payout of $10 million as well as $650,000 a year in child support.
Now discover how Donald Trump makes money