Background and career
Virginia Pimenta da Fonseca Serrão Costa (born April 6, 1999), better known as Virginia Fonseca or simply Virginia, is a Brazilian-American television presenter, entrepreneur and digital influencer. Virginia is a Brazilian American of Portuguese descent, but she stated that even though she has US citizenship, she does not speak English and that she never wished to or went back to her country of origin, the United States, ever since moving to Brazil. After a 2-year-long relationship with YouTuber Pedro Rezende, Virginia revealed her new relationship with singer Zé Felipe on June 27, 2020. On March 26, 2021, Felipe and Virginia got married during a private ceremony in his house. She has three children with him: Maria Alice, born May 30, 2021; Maria Flor, born October 22, 2022; and José Leonardo, born September 8, 2024. On May 27, 2025, Virginia and Zé Felipe announced their separation.
In 2016, the then sixteen-year-old Virginia started filming her first YouTube videos. With her third video, in which she presents her Brazilian funk playlist, she achieved the mark of 100,000 subscribers. The next year, having gone back to Brazil, she had a short and unsuccessful DJ career. Then, seeing as it wasn't going well, she was invited to make YouTube videos with the Brazilian YouTuber Pedro Rezende. Thanks to Rezende's already established fame, and her joining his agency, the ADR (short for Rezende's Alliance), Virginia's own visibility and popularity rose. It grew even more once the two announced that they were in a relationship. She also became a recurring guest in his videos, known for their challenges and games. In 2020, Virginia ended her relationship with Rezende, being forced to pay a fine of 2 million Brazilian reais, due to a breach of contract with his agency. In the same year, after revealing her new relationship with the Brazilian country singer Zé Felipe, she became a model and dancer for his music videos: promoting, dancing and creating choreographies for them.
In 2020, after the announcement of her first pregnancy, Virginia became even more popular, thanks specially to an allegation that she had got pregnant for fame and money. In the same year, she had a cameo in her husband's song Tranquilita, but Virginia later revealed that she did not wish to follow a singing career. Still in 2021, she founded 3 businesses: the advertising and publicity agency, Talismã Digital; the skin care and beauty products brand, WePink; and the aesthetic clinic SK Aesthetic. The last one being sold the following year for an unknown amount of money. In 2022, with the popularity gained by the birth of her second daughter, Virginia launched the children's cosmetics brand Maria's Baby by Virginia Fonseca. In 2023, Virginia was announced as employed by the Brazilian television network SBT.
On April 6, 2024, on her 25th birthday, Virginia premiered on television with her program Sabadou com Virginia (Saturday with Virginia). On debut, it won second place in a popularity poll by the Ibope and was SBT's most viewed program.
On 13 May 2025, Virginia testified before the parliamentary Inquiry Commission on Betting regarding her "central role" in promoting online gambling on social media. Virginia drew attention for the innocent image she adopted, in contrast to the designer outfits she usually wears in her daily life. For the occasion, she chose light makeup, a sweatshirt featuring her daughter's face, and a pink insulated tumbler. Her appearance quickly became one of the top trending topics on X, with many commentators describing it as "meticulously calculated." The live broadcast of the hearing on TV Senado set the channel's highest audience of the year, reaching 135,000 concurrent viewers, while total views surpassed 1 million. During her testimony, Virginia frequently smiled broadly and maintained that she had never been aware of the social harm caused by online gambling. In one moment that drew laughter, she accidentally sucked on the microphone, mistaking it for the straw of her tumbler; many users on X believed the incident appeared staged.
During her testimony, she acknowledged that she had used fake accounts to simulate online gambling and generate screenshots of fictitious betting winnings in order to encourage her followers to place bets. She said that she did not regret her actions and that there was nothing she could do to help her followers. About 20 minutes after the hearing ended, Virginia announced discounts on her makeup line on her Instagram account. Her conduct during the hearing was widely criticized, resulting in the loss of approximately 600,000 followers. The CPI's final report alleged that Virginia had signed agreements with betting companies under which she would receive 30% of her followers' total gambling losses, provided they placed their bets through links she had promoted. Although she denied the practice, the contract she submitted was cited in the report as confirming the arrangement. The report recommended that she be indicted for deceptive advertising and fraud, along with 15 other individuals and companies, including influencer Deolane Bezerra. By a vote of four to three, however, the Parliamentary Inquiry Commission rejected the report and concluded its work without adopting any measures. It was the first time in ten years that a Brazilian Federal Senate CPI had rejected its final report.
