Background and career
Bar Refaeli (Hebrew: בר רפאלי; born (1985-06-04)4 June 1985) is an Israeli actress, model, philanthropist and host. She is among the most internationally successful models to come from Israel, appearing on the cover of the 2009 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, and being voted No. 1 on Maxim magazine's Hot 100 list of 2012. As a television host, Refaeli has hosted The X Factor Israel since 2013 and co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 in Tel Aviv.
As a result of her modeling and investment careers, her net worth was estimated at US$20 million in 2015. She was the highest-paid model in Israel according to Forbes Israel in 2013.
Refaeli was born and raised in Hod HaSharon, Israel, to a secular Jewish family. In Hebrew, her first name means "wild" (as in wilderness), and her surname literally means "my God heals" and is a derivative of the biblical angel Raphael. Her parents were both born in Israel, and her grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Italy, Lithuania and Poland. Her grandparents were Holocaust survivors. Her father Refael "Rafi" Refaeli is a former horse stable owner, and her mother was a model in the 1970s under her maiden name Tzipora "Tzipi" Levine. Refaeli has two younger brothers; On Refaeli is an actor and model, and Dor Refaeli is an entrepreneur. She also has an older half-brother, Neil Ben-Porat, from her mother's first marriage to Israeli businessman Yehousha "Shuki" Ben-Porat.
Refaeli began modeling at the age of eight months, when she first appeared in commercials. Orthodonture at 12 interrupted her modeling until she was 15, when an Israeli fashion awards ceremony awarded Refaeli "Model of the Year" (2000). She played prominently in campaigns for the fashion brands Castro and Pilpel, and she starred in a Milky pudding commercial.
She has appeared in editorials for French, American, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Ukrainian Elle, Spanish Vogue, British, Russian, Australian, and Vietnamese Harper's Bazaar, V, French and Dutch L'Officiel, American, British, Italian, German, Spanish, and Indian GQ, i-D, and Allure.
How Bar Refaeli makes money
As a result of her modeling and investment careers, her net worth was estimated at US$20 million in 2015. By November 2011, the company had raised $1 million in venture capital funds. In 2013, her startup Mika Look, which is an iPad app that allows users to purchase the items that models are wearing, raised $1.2 million in its first financing round.
