Melinda French Gates

Melinda French Gates (born Melinda Ann French; August 15, 1964) is an American philanthropist, former multimedia product developer and manager at Microsoft, and the ex-wife of its co-founder and billionaire Bill Gates.

French Gates has consistently been ranked as one of the world's most powerful women by Forbes magazine.

Melinda Ann French was born on August 15, 1964, in Dallas, Texas.

She is the second of four children born to Raymond Joseph French Jr., an aerospace engineer, and Elaine Agnes Amerland, a homemaker.

She has an older sister and two younger brothers.

French, a Catholic, attended St. Monica Catholic School, where she was the valedictorian of her class.

At age 14, French was introduced to the Apple II by her father, and Mrs. Bauer, a school teacher who advocated teaching computer science at the all-girls school.

It was from this experience she developed her interest in computer games and the BASIC programming language.

French graduated as valedictorian from Ursuline Academy of Dallas in 1982.

She earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and economics from Duke University in 1986 and an MBA from Duke's Fuqua School of Business in 1987.

At Duke, French was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, Beta Rho Chapter.

French Gates's first job was tutoring children in mathematics and computer programming.

After graduation, she became a marketing manager with Microsoft, being responsible for the development of multimedia products.

These included Cinemania, Encarta, Publisher, Microsoft Bob, Money, Works (Macintosh) and Word.

She worked on Expedia, which became one of the most popular travel booking websites.

Melinda began dating Microsoft CEO Bill Gates in 1987, after meeting him at a trade fair in New York.

In the early 1990s, French Gates was appointed as General Manager of Information Products, a position which she held until 1996.

She left Microsoft that year, reportedly, to focus on starting a family.

In 1994, she married Gates in a private ceremony held in Lanai, Hawaii.

They have three children: daughters Jennifer and Phoebe Gates and son Rory Gates.

The family maintained a home in an earth-sheltered mansion overlooking Lake Washington in Medina, Washington.

The family also owned an oceanfront residence in Del Mar, California.

In May 2021, Melinda Gates and her then-husband announced their decision to divorce in a joint statement on social media.

This ended 27 years of marriage, and 34 years as a couple.

French Gates served as a member of Duke University's Board of Trustees from 1996 to 2003.

In 2000, she and her then-husband Bill Gates co-founded the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private charitable organization as of 2015.

She and her ex-husband have been awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom and the French Legion of Honour.

In early May 2021, Bill and Melinda Gates announced they were getting divorced but will still remain co-chairs of the foundation.

She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2021.

Since 2000, French Gates has been in the public eye, stating "As I thought about strong women of history, I realized that they stepped out in some way."

This has allowed her work shaping and advancing the goals of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to be publicly recognized.

By 2022, Bill and Melinda had given US$59.1 billion of their personal wealth to the Foundation.

She attends the annual Bilderberg Group conference and has held a seat on the Board of Directors of Graham Holdings (formerly The Washington Post Company) since 2004.

She was also on the board of directors at Drugstore.com but left in August 2006 to focus on philanthropic projects.

In 2015, French Gates founded Pivotal Ventures as a separate, independent organization to identify and implement innovative solutions to problems affecting U.S. women and families.

In 2019, French Gates debuted as an author with the book The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World.

Former president Barack Obama starred in a comedy sketch in order to promote it.

The book highlights the failure to acknowledge women's unpaid work, drawing on feminist economist Dame Marilyn Waring's book If Women Counted.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Melinda Gates had been meeting with divorce lawyers since at least October 2019 after Bill's business dealings with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein became public, and she had warned him about associating with Epstein as early as 2013.

Although the couple did not have a prenuptial agreement, Melinda Gates (who filed) did not request spousal support.