Meghan, Duchess of Sussex
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is an American member of the British royal family, media personality, entrepreneur, and actress. She is married to Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, the younger son of King Charles III.
Meghan was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. Her acting career began at Northwestern University. She played the part of Rachel Zane for seven seasons in the legal drama series Suits. She also developed a social media presence, which included The Tig, a lifestyle blog. During The Tig period, Meghan became involved in charity work focused primarily on women's issues and social justice. She was married to the film producer Trevor Engelson from 2011 until their divorce in 2014.
Meghan married Prince Harry in 2018 and became known as the Duchess of Sussex. They have two children: Archie and Lilibet. The couple stepped down as working royals in January 2020, moved to Meghan's native Southern California and launched Archewell Inc., a Beverly Hills-based mix of for-profit and not-for-profit business organizations. In March 2021, she and her husband participated in Oprah with Meghan and Harry, a much-publicized American television interview by Oprah Winfrey. She has written the children's book The Bench, hosted a podcast Archetypes, and has starred in the Netflix series Harry & Meghan and With Love, Meghan. Her lifestyle and cooking brand, As Ever, was officially launched in April 2025.
Early life and education
Rachel Meghan Markle was born on August 4, 1981, at West Park Hospital in Canoga Park, Los Angeles, California. She identifies as mixed race; "My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I'm half black and half white." Her parents – the former makeup artist Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle Sr., a television lighting director and director of photography – separated when she was two years old and divorced four years later.Markle reportedly has a close relationship with her mother. Until the age of nine, both parents contributed to raising her; then, her father was left in charge of caring for her so Meghan lived with him full-time before commencing university at age eighteen.
Markle Sr. worked as a director of photography and lighting for General Hospital and Married... with Children, and Meghan occasionally visited the set of Married... with Children as a child. In later life, she became estranged from her father and paternal half-siblings, Samantha Markle and Thomas Markle Jr.
Growing up in View Park–Windsor Hills, Los Angeles, Markle attended Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse. At age eleven, she and her classmates wrote to Procter & Gamble to gender-neutralize a dishwashing soap commercial on national television. She was raised as a Christian, though conflicting reports indicate she was raised either Catholic or Protestant. She graduated from Immaculate Heart High School, a fee-charging all-girls Catholic school. Markle took part in plays and musicals at the school, where her father helped with lighting. During her teenage years, she worked at a local frozen yogurt shop and a donut shop and later as a nanny and waitress. She also volunteered at a soup kitchen in Skid Row, Los Angeles.
In 1999, she was admitted to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she joined Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. With other members of Kappa Kappa Gamma, Markle did volunteer work with the Glass Slipper Project. After her junior year, her uncle Michael Markle helped secure her an internship as a junior press officer at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, and she considered a political career. However, she did not score high enough in the Foreign Service Officer test to proceed further with the US State Department and returned to NU. She also attended a study abroad program in Madrid. In 2003, Markle earned her bachelor's degree with a double major in theater and international studies from Northwestern's School of Communication.
Acting career
According to Markle, she had some difficulty getting roles early in her career due to being "ethnically ambiguous" because "I wasn't black enough for the black roles and I wasn't white enough for the white ones." To support herself between acting jobs, she worked as a freelance calligrapher and taught bookbinding. Her first on-screen appearance was a small role as a nurse in an episode of the daytime soap opera General Hospital, a show for which her father served as a lighting director. Markle had small guest roles on the television shows Century City, The War at Home and CSI: NY. For her role in Century City, she told the casting directors that she was a SAG-AFTRA member when she was not, but after being cast, the employers were obliged to help her join the union according to the Taft–Hartley Act. Markle also did several contract acting and modeling jobs. Between 2006 and 2007, she worked as a "briefcase girl" on 34 episodes of the US version of the game show Deal or No Deal. She appeared in Fox's series Fringe as Junior Agent Amy Jessup in the first two episodes of its second season.Markle appeared in small roles in the films Get Him to the Greek, Remember Me and The Candidate in 2010 and the film Horrible Bosses in 2011. She was paid $187,000 for her role in Remember Me and $171,429 for her role in the short film The Candidate. In July 2011, she joined the cast of the USA Network show Suits through to late 2017 and the seventh season. Her character, Rachel Zane, began as a paralegal and eventually became an attorney. While working on Suits, she lived for nine months each year in Toronto. She was reportedly paid either $50,000 per episode or $450,000 per year for her work in Suits.
Markle made her acting return in November 2025, being cast in Close Personal Friends.
Personal life
Early relationships and first marriage
Markle and American film producer Trevor Engelson began dating in 2004. They were married in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, on August 16, 2011. They separated in 2013, and were granted a divorce in 2014. Markle's subsequent live-in relationship with Canadian celebrity chef and restaurateur Cory Vitiello ended in May 2016 after almost two years.Second marriage and motherhood
In mid-2016, Markle began a relationship with Prince Harry, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II. According to the couple, they first connected with each other via Instagram, and they have also said that they were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend in July 2016. On November 8, eight days after the relationship was made public by the press, the prince directed his communications secretary to release a statement on his behalf to express personal concern about pejorative and false comments made about his girlfriend by mainstream media and internet trolls. Later, in a letter to a British media regulator, Markle's representatives complained about harassment from journalists. In September 2017, Markle and Harry appeared together in public in Toronto at the Invictus Games, of which Harry is founding patron.Markle's engagement to Harry was announced on November 27, 2017, by his father Charles. The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by the British media and prompted generally positive comments about a mixed-race person as a member of the royal family, especially in regard to Commonwealth countries. Markle announced that she would retire from acting and her intention to become a British citizen.
In preparation for the wedding, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, baptized Markle and confirmed her in the Church of England on March 6, 2018. The private ceremony, performed with water from the River Jordan, took place in the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace. The marriage ceremony was held on May 19 at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Her wedding dress was designed by Clare Waight Keller. Markle later revealed that there was a private exchange of vows three days earlier, with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the couple's garden. However, this private exchange of vows was not a legally recognized marriage.
After the wedding, the Duke and Duchess lived at Nottingham Cottage in London, in the grounds of Kensington Palace. In May 2018, it was reported that they had signed a two-year lease on Westfield Large, located on the Great Tew Estate in the Cotswolds. They gave up the lease after photos of the house and its interior were published by a paparazzi agency. The couple considered settling at the twenty-one room Apartment 1 within Kensington Palace, but moved to Frogmore Cottage in the Home Park of Windsor Castle instead. The Crown Estate refurbished the cottage at a cost of £2.4 million, paid out of the Sovereign Grant, with the Duke later reimbursing expenses beyond restoration and ordinary maintenance, a part of which was offset against rental payments that were due at the time. Meghan gave birth to a son, Archie, on May 6, 2019. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's office moved to Buckingham Palace and officially closed on March 31, 2020, when the Sussexes withdrew from undertaking official royal engagements. After some months in Canada and the United States, in June 2020, the couple bought a house on the former estate of Riven Rock, Montecito, California. The next month, Meghan suffered a miscarriage. She gave birth to a daughter, Lilibet, on June 4, 2021. Meghan later revealed that she had suffered from postpartum preeclampsia. The Duke and Duchess have owned a Labrador named Pula and two Beagles named Guy and Mamma Mia. Meghan previously owned a Labrador-German Shepherd cross named Bogart.
Political views
Markle was politically vocal before marrying Harry. At age 9, she and her friends reportedly campaigned against the Gulf War. Decades later, she backed Hillary Clinton during the 2016 United States presidential election and publicly denounced her opponent and eventual winner, Donald Trump. In the same year, when the referendum on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union resulted in favor of Brexit, Markle expressed her disappointment on Instagram. In 2017, Markle recommended the book Who Rules the World? by left-wing intellectual Noam Chomsky on her Instagram account.In July 2018, Irish senator Catherine Noone tweeted that the Duchess was "pleased to see the result" of the Irish referendum on legalizing abortion. Meghan received criticism for potentially breaching the protocol that prohibits royals from interfering in politics; She deleted her tweet and emphasized that her statement was misleading and "the Duchess was not in any way political".
After she returned to the United States and as an eligible voter, she released a video with her husband encouraging others to register for the 2020 United States presidential election on National Voter Registration Day. Some media outlets took it as an implicit endorsement of the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, which prompted then-president Trump to dismiss their messaging at a press conference. In October 2021, she penned an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, advocating for paid leave for parents. Her remarks were met by backlash from Republican representatives Jason Smith and Lisa McClain, who found her statement "out of touch" and criticized her interference with American politics while utilizing her British royal titles. Meghan has reportedly lobbied senators from both parties on the issue of paid family leave, including Democratic senators Patty Murray and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as Republican senators Shelley Moore Capito and Susan Collins. She has also publicly spoken in support of federal voting protections.
In February 2022, she voiced her support for the Supreme Court nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson. In June 2022, she publicly supported Moms Demand Action, an organization which campaigns for safer gun laws in the US. In the same month, in an interview with Jessica Yellin for Vogue, Meghan criticized the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that abortion is not a protected constitutional right and voiced her support for the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.