Kinlight · The British Royal Line

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

1981 – · Generation XXXIX · Duchess of Sussex · House of Windsor

Portrait of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex

Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was born Rachel Meghan Markle in Los Angeles on 4 August 1981, the daughter of Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle, a television lighting director. She went to the Hollywood Little Red Schoolhouse and Immaculate Heart High School, and in 2003 graduated from Northwestern University in Illinois with a degree in theatre and international studies. While a student she worked as an intern at the United States embassy in Buenos Aires.

She spent several years in small television and film parts before being cast in 2011 as the paralegal Rachel Zane in the legal drama Suits, a role she played for seven seasons and more than a hundred episodes while living for much of each year in Toronto. Alongside acting she ran a lifestyle website, The Tig, from 2014 to 2017, and took on charity work concerned with women and girls, as an advocate for UN Women and as a global ambassador for World Vision Canada. Her first marriage, to the film producer Trevor Engelson in 2011, ended in divorce in 2014.

She began a relationship with Prince Harry, the younger son of the then Prince of Wales, in 2016. Their engagement was announced on 27 November 2017, and she gave up acting. She was baptised and confirmed in the Church of England in March 2018, and the couple married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, on 19 May 2018. Queen Elizabeth II created Harry Duke of Sussex that morning, and Meghan became Duchess of Sussex. Their son, Prince Archie, was born on 6 May 2019 and their daughter, Princess Lilibet, on 4 June 2021.

As a working member of the royal family she accompanied her husband on official visits to Ireland, Australia, Fiji, Tonga, New Zealand, Morocco and southern Africa, and became patron of the National Theatre, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the employment charity Smart Works and the animal charity Mayhew. Her first project as duchess was a cookbook, published in 2018, to raise funds for a community kitchen run by women affected by the Grenfell Tower fire in London.

In January 2020 the couple announced that they would step back from their roles as senior members of the royal family. They carried out their last official engagements in March 2020, and in February 2021 Buckingham Palace confirmed that they would not return as working royals. They settled in Montecito, California, and founded Archewell, which combines charitable work with media production. In March 2021 they gave a widely reported television interview to Oprah Winfrey. Meghan has since published a children’s picture book, The Bench (2021), presented the podcast Archetypes (2022), appeared with her husband in the Netflix documentary series Harry & Meghan (2022), and in 2025 launched both the Netflix series With Love, Meghan and a lifestyle brand, As Ever.

In August 2026 the family moved back to the United Kingdom, six years after the couple stepped back from royal duties.

Place in the family

  • Meghan, Duchess of Sussex married Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II.

Images

One of 53 people of House of Windsor (from 1917) in this archive. The present house — it renamed itself Windsor in 1917, setting aside the German title Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

Read more on Wikipedia

Partners

Children

Life

  • 1981 — Born
  • 2018 — Married Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex

Sources

  1. Meghan, Duchess of Sussex · Wikipedia
  2. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  3. Prince Harry and Meghan arrive back in UK, six years after leaving royal life behind · CNN

Open Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in the interactive tree