Melinda French Gates is different from your average wealthy divorcee. Obviously, she's worth billions at this point post-divorce. But she's also one of the most influential women in the country right now. She works alongside Michelle Obama, MacKenzie Scott, and other women in power who are really trying to give back to communities that deserve a little bit more. I'm Jordan Hart. I'm a tech reporter here at Business Insider, and today we're going to be spilling the tea on Melinda French Gates. French Gates found her love for computer science all the way back in Catholic school when they brought in Apple computers for the students to try, and she was quickly fascinated by the coding and the logical puzzle that it all presented to her. French Gates would then go on to get her bachelor's and her master's from Duke University. Microsoft recruited French Gates in 1987, and shortly

After that, she met Bill Gates for the first time at a company dinner. He'd asked her out like two weeks in advance, and she said no. He may not have been spontaneous enough for her. So he asked her out for that night, and that time she said yes. So the couple dated for like seven years, and they kept a pretty low profile at Microsoft. The couple were married in 1994 on a golf course in Hawaii in a wedding that reportedly cost about a million dollars. That's probably because Gates booked all of the hotel rooms and all of the helicopters during their wedding so they could keep it as private as possible and avoid anyone flying over trying to snap photos of the wedding. French Gates eventually left Microsoft to focus on raising their children. The couple shared three kids in total, two daughters and one son. And Bill Gates is held as this, like, tech godfather, but he and French Gates ultimately decided

to not let their kids have phones until they were 14 years old. And that's not the only thing that's a little bit different about their parenting style. They've also spent $37 million on properties so their daughter Jennifer could practice show jumping and eventually become a nationally ranked equestrian. But when you're a billionaire, you definitely have some millions to spare. So they weren't spending it all on lavish properties for their kids to practice all of their interests. They were also trying to figure out how they could give back. During a trip to Africa in 1993, the couple witnessed poverty and extreme disparity between the healthcare there and the healthcare that they're used to seeing in the US. When we were engaged, Bill and I talked about the fact that this wealth would go back to society. And that's how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began. It's gone on to become one of the biggest philanthropic

organizations in the US and richer than even some countries. The couple got divorced in 2021. So, there are a few factors that could have contributed to this divorce. French Gates has said in the past that she did not like that Gates had a relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. She said she advised him to break it off. And then there's also the fact of an affair with a Microsoft employee, which Gates has publicly acknowledged. Even though their breakup sounds a little messy, they kept a really good professional relationship, it seems, and they were able to still get work done at the foundation. In the years since her divorce, French Gates says she's dating again. No specifics. She's moved out of the hundred-million-plus-dollar compound, Xanadu 2.0, and into her own smaller property that she said she loves. She's left the Gates Foundation earlier this year. Since leaving the foundation, French Gates

is charting her own course in philanthropy now at Pivotal Ventures. She's focused on getting women in power, helping them achieve equality, and reproductive rights. If you lift up women, you lift up everybody else, and French Gates is accomplishing that by putting money towards contraceptives for women and donating to candidates who champion abortion rights like Kamala Harris. French Gates has come a long way from being a product manager at Microsoft, and her story may sound a little bit similar to another tech founder's ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. She got billions in their divorce, and she pledged to give away billions as a result. There's a really palpable string between the two. They can make decisions based on what they want to do and support causes that truly mean something to them instead of kind of having to conform to a role that they feel like maybe they were placed in as a result.

of being a wife of a high-powered billionaire tech exec.

Where Melinda French Gates Spends Her Billions | Business Insider Explains | Business Insider

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Where Melinda French Gates Spends Her Billions | Business Insider Explains | Business Insider

Where Melinda French Gates Spends Her Billions | Business Insider Explains | Business Insider

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