Background and career
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (born Rachel Meghan Markle, August 4, 1981), 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 (2011–2018) in the legal drama series Suits. She also developed a social media presence, which included The Tig (2014–2017), 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 (charitable) 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 (2022), and has appeared in the Netflix series Harry & Meghan (2022) and With Love, Meghan (2025). Her lifestyle and cooking brand, As Ever, was officially launched in April 2025. In August 2026, she and Harry relocated to the UK with their children, without plans to resume public duties as working members of the royal family.
Rachel Meghan Markle was born on August 4, 1981, in Los Angeles, California. She identifies as mixed race, stating, "My dad is Caucasian and my mom is African American. I'm half black and half white." Her parents, former makeup artist Doria Ragland and retired television lighting and photography director Thomas Markle Sr., separated when she was two and divorced four years later. Meghan reportedly has a close relationship with her mother. Until the age of nine, both parents contributed to raising her; afterward, her father became her primary caregiver while her mother pursued her career, and Markle lived with him full‑time before starting university at age 18. Markle Sr. worked as a director of photography and lighting for General Hospital and Married... with Children, and she occasionally visited the set of Married... with Children as a child. In later life, she became estranged from her father and her paternal half-siblings, Samantha Markle and Thomas Markle Jr. Growing up in the View Park–Windsor Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, Markle attended Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse. At age 11, she and her classmates wrote to Procter & Gamble urging the company to gender-neutralize a dishwashing-soap commercial on national television. She was raised Christian, though conflicting reports indicate she was raised either Catholic or Protestant. She graduated from Immaculate Heart High School (Los Angeles), a fee-charging all-girls Catholic school. Markle took part in plays and musicals at the school, where her father assisted 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 (NU) in Evanston, Illinois, where she joined the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. With other members of the sorority, Markle volunteered 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 briefly considered a political career. However, she did not score high enough on 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.
According to Markle, she had difficulty securing roles early in her career because she was "ethnically ambiguous", explaining, "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 (2004), The War at Home (2006), and CSI: NY (2006). For her role in Century City, she told the casting directors she was a SAG-AFTRA member when she was not; after she was cast, the employers were required to help her join the union under 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 (2010), Remember Me (2010) (produced by her then-partner Trevor Engelson), The Candidate (2010), and in the film Horrible Bosses (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 series 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 on the series. Markle appeared in the 2015 British crime film Anti-Social, which was edited and released again in 2016, to give her role more prominence after she began dating Prince Harry. She made her acting return in November 2025, being cast in Close Personal Friends.
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.
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, Harry directed his communications secretary to release a statement on his behalf expressing 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 the founding patron. Markle's engagement to Harry was announced on November 27, 2017, by his father Charles (then the Prince of Wales). The announcement was greeted with enthusiasm by the British media and prompted generally positive commentary about a mixed-race person joining the royal family, particularly in 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 in a private ceremony, performed with water from the River Jordan, in the Chapel Royal at St James's Palace. On the morning of the wedding, Queen Elizabeth II conferred the title of Duke of Sussex upon Harry; Markle became Duchess of Sussex through her marriage to him later that day. The marriage ceremony was held on May 19 at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Her wedding dress was designed by Clare Waight Keller. Meghan later revealed that there had been a private exchange of vows three days earlier with the Archbishop of Canterbury in the couple's garden, although this exchange was not a legally recognized marriage. After the wedding, Meghan and Harry lived at Nottingham Cottage in London, on 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 in the twenty-one room Apartment 1 within Kensington Palace, but instead 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 Harry later reimbursing expenses beyond restoration and ordinary maintenance, a portion of which was offset against rental payments due at the time. Meghan gave birth to a son, Archie, on May 6, 2019. Meghan and Harry's office moved to Buckingham Palace and officially closed on March 31, 2020, when they withdrew from undertaking official royal engagements. After some months in Canada and the United States, the couple bought a house in June 2020 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. In 2024, the couple reportedly acquired a property in Portugal, understood to be in the Melides area of the Alentejo coast, while retaining their home in Montecito. In August 2026, the couple relocated to the UK for an extended period and established a private residence outside London, while retaining their properties in California and Portugal. Meghan and Harry have owned a Labrador named Pula and two Beagles named Guy and Mamma Mia. She previously owned a Labrador-German Shepherd cross named Bogart.
