When Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, announced in March that she would be launching a lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard, it took the internet by storm. The company, which will reportedly sell everything from table linens to pet food, has so far soft launched one product: a strawberry jam that the duchess sent to 50 of her closest famous friends (it is still not available for public purchase), including Kris Jenner and Chrissy Teigen.
American Riviera Orchard is far from the first company started by Meghan and Prince Harry. Since they exited The Firm in 2020, the couple have embarked on a number of business ventures.
Royal entrepreneurship is a relatively new phenomenon, which has produced decidedly mixed results. Usually these businesses are started by royals further down the line of succession, or those who have left life as working royals by choice, divorce, or forced exile.
There have been major success stories, like Marie-Chantal, Crown Princess of Greece, who has helmed her eponymous luxury children’s brand, Marie-Chantal, since 2000. Just last year, the dashing Prince Carl Philip of Sweden, son of King Carl Gustaf and Queen Silvia, announced the launch of his brand, Bernadotte & Kylberg, selling upscale textiles like silk scarves and cashmere blankets.
For Princess Märtha Louise of Norway, a spiritual exercise and a visit from a guardian angel inspired her to trade her royal duties for work. “That led me to all the entrepreneurship. It led me to being a princess in a different way and not just the traditional way,” she said on a podcast episode with former princess of Luxembourg Tessy Anthony de Nassau.
She has since started a variety of businesses, many in partnership with her fiancé Durek Verrett, a spiritual shaman.
Of course, accusations of nepotism have plagued working royals for decades. Prince Edward’s run at the helm of Ardent Productions in the early ’90s ended in embarrassment and claims that he milked his family connections. (Ardent Productions denied the allegations). In Monaco, Prince Albert is currently embroiled in a financial scandal, which includes accusations that Monaco’s government unfairly awarded state contracts to businesses owned by his nephews Andrea and Pierre Casiraghi. Bloomberg Businessweek reported that both the prince and the Casiraghi brothers denied any wrongdoing, and the brothers stated that they conduct their business activities “with integrity and strict adherence to all governmental rules and regulations.”
But not all enterprising royals have been so coddled. Some of the earliest titled entrepreneurs started businesses simply to survive. After World War I and the Russian Revolution, thousands of nobles fled their home countries penniless, with few work skills and even fewer options. According to The Flight of the Romanovs by Constantine V. Pleshakov and John Curtis Perry, when Russian Grand Duke Alexander “Sandro” Mikhailovich began looking for a job, he was met with derision. “The very idea of hiring a grand duke struck them as a ridiculous notion,” Sandro noted sadly. Sandro finally managed to make a living, trading on his name. Other royals decided to start businesses on their own.
For aristocratic women, one of the main avenues of entrepreneurship was dressmaking and embroidery, a practical skill in which many of them excelled. In Paris, the stylish and enterprising Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna started her own embroidery house, Kitmir, in the 1920s, employing dozens of other exiled Russian women who made intricate beaded shawls, handbags, and embroidered dresses by hand. She worked closely with Coco Chanel for some time before expanding to supply to over 200 other businesses.
Maria loved the work, finding fulfillment that she had lacked in her formerly cushy life. “It is not necessary to feel sorry for me. I do not believe that idle women are happier than those who work,” she stated, per Helen Rappaport’s After the Romanovs. “You have to build something new and fruitful.”
She was not the only Russian royal to join the fashion industry. The notorious and stylish Prince Felix Yusupov, one of the nobles who conspired to kill Rasputin, founded the Parisian fashion house Irfe. His famously beautiful wife, Princess Irina, served as the face of the brand. High society flocked to their first fashion show, eager to be part of such an exotic occasion.
“In the winter of 1924, there was a fashion show by the big Parisian houses at the Hotel Ritz on the Place Vendome, which ended with a ball,” Alexandre Vassiliev writes in Beauty in Exile. “The Irfe atelier was furiously working late into the night: The last designs were still being sewn as the Irfe models arrived at the Ritz well after midnight, with the ravishing Irina in the lead. It created an indelible impression even on the jaded Parisian public, who had seen it all. A French reporter wrote: ‘Originality, refined taste, meticulous work and an artistic sense of color immediately placed this modest atelier in the ranks of the big houses of fashion.’”
Fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands would continue to be the most natural fit for royals, since their very names conjured images of luxury and glamour. In the 1950s, Princess Macella Borghese began making makeup from natural ingredients found on her family’s famed Roman estate. Eager to start a comprehensive line of lipsticks, she partnered with Charles Revson, founder of Revlon, after she received the blessing of Pope Pius XII.
But only one princess would truly make revolutionary waves in the fashion industry, building an empire now in its 50th year. After her wedding to the German prince Egon von Fürstenberg in the summer of 1969, Belgium-born Princess Diane von Fürstenberg arrived in New York with a dream. “The people I met were amused and intrigued by the unorthodox presentation of little jersey dresses pulled out of a Vuitton suitcase by a young, pregnant European princess,” she writes in her autobiography, The Woman I Wanted to Be.
The charming, photogenic von Fürstenbergs quickly became the It couple on the social scene, and the former princess admits that her connections and title opened major doors. But von Fürstenburg, who had been creating her dresses since before her marriage, wanted something more. “I didn’t want to be a European Park Avenue princess with a pretend decadent life,” she writes. “That woman was definitely not the woman I wanted to be.”
Von Fürstenberg soon garnered an audience with Diana Vreeland, the legendary editor of Vogue, who championed her work. Her first fashion show was a small success, and her innovative designs—coupled with her title—caught the attention of the press. “Early articles said much more about me being a socialite princess than the clothes I was showing, which, at first, I found frustrating,” she writes. “But that publicity prompted curiosity.”
The pragmatic, savvy von Fürstenberg kept her head down and kept designing. In 1974, she debuted her famous wrap dress. She traveled the country, appearing at department stores to promote her line. “The stores loved promoting the arrival of a real, live, young princess who was designing easy, sexy dresses that most women could afford,” she writes. In the next four years, she would sell millions of dresses.
After officially divorcing Egon in 1983 and later marrying powerful media mogul Barry Diller in 2001, von Fürstenberg took a hiatus from fashion. She returned in the 1990s, selling a new line, Diane von Fürstenberg Silk Assets, on QVC and then HSN (Diller owned interests in both at different times). Other titled entrepreneurs took note of her startling success on the channels.
In 1997 she relaunched her wrap dress, and Diane von Früstenberg continues to be a family-owned global lifestyle enterprise. In March 2024, the company launched DVF for Target, an affordable capsule collection that she designed along with her granddaughter Talita von Fürstenberg.
Others followed suit. In the 1980s, the artistic and gifted French countess Jacqueline de Ribes became famous for her upscale label. Toward the early aughts, the elegant and intelligent Princess Elizabeth of former Yugoslavia (mother of actress Catherine Oxenberg) launched her perfume E on QVC, whose bottle featured a royal blue script and crown.
According to New York Magazine, Elizabeth received the backing of none other than entertainment impresario and host Merv Griffin after he complimented her on her perfume. “When she told him it was the perfume she created to match the custom blend worn by her grandmother, her imperial and royal highness Grand Duchess Helen of Russia, he said, ‘You’re kidding! Let’s market that,’” her brand manager Ron Kraut effused.
Other titled folks would join the ranks of TV entrepreneurship. Francesco, the son of Princess Marcella Borghese, sold a popular cosmetics line on QVC and HSN alongside his wife, Amanda. However, they endured a million-dollar battle with Borghese Inc., the company founded by his mother (now run by Georgette Mosbacher), which wanted them to cease using their own family name.
“What are they going to get from us? They are not going to get our history,” Francesco’s son Prince Lorenzo Borghese, famous for his stint on The Bachelor, said to the New York Times. “They believe they own my family’s history for everything.”
The court battle was reportedly settled in 2013. “The Borghese family members cannot trademark the Borghese name for products, but can use their full names for goods,” Page Six reported. “The family can also discuss their grandmother Princess Marcella and their family history for “biographical” use, but not for commercial use.”
The Borghese family continues to own businesses, with Lorenzo focusing his attention on his company, Prince Lorenzo’s Royal Treatment pet line. Another enterprising royal, Prince Emanuele Filiberto di Savoia (grandson of Umberto II, the last king of Italy) turned heads when he became the first royal to open a food truck, Prince of Venice.
The truck was such a success that he opened the fast-casual brick and mortar Prince of Venice in Los Angeles. “Like a loyal courtier, make the pilgrimage to the Prince of Venice and be royally rewarded with this exclusive opportunity to enjoy top-notch Italian pasta and pizza at your convenience,” the restaurant’s website extolls.
Prince of Venice also touts Emanuele’s family connection to the famous Margherita pizza:
“While visiting Naples with her husband, Queen Margherita of Savoy (Prince Emanuele’s great-grandmother) grew tired of eating the french food that was served in the palace. She summoned the best pizza maker in Naples, Raffaele Esposito,” the Prince of Venice website reads. Esposito prepared the queen three pies, the last being a tomato and mozzarella pizza with olive oil and basil, representing the colors used in the Italian flag. The queen loved it so much that she sent a letter of compliments. Esposito was so proud that he named the pizza after her.”
But if the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are looking for a model of what not to do as a royal entrepreneur, they should look no further than Harry’s plucky, scandal-prone aunt Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. After divorcing Prince Andrew in 1996, she has served as a spokesperson for Weight Watchers, and promoted Wedgewood china, the high-end camera Olympus, the internet company World Online, and the fountain pen company Montegrappa. She has written children books and romance novels, starred on the OWN reality show Finding Sarah: From Royalty to the Real World, launched her own podcast, and coproduced the film The Young Victoria.
Despite making millions of dollars in deals, her lavish spending and poor business decisions came to a head in 2008, with the failure of her company Hartmoor. “My slow drift into insolvency stemmed from the collapse of my company, Hartmoor, which I’d set up in 2006,” she writes in her autobiography Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself. “Located in an office building on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, Hartmoor was intended as a vehicle to market my career in publishing, media, and public speaking. I funneled $ 1.4 million of my own savings into it. I intended it to be ‘a global inspirational lifestyle and wellness company.’”
In 2008, after her company collapsed, the duchess found herself in massive debt, but she refused to file for bankruptcy. I was advised time and again to file for bankruptcy,” she writes, “but stubbornly, if not foolishly, I did not want to do so, because I was trying so hard to protect all the people working for me. I had promised them their jobs were secure.”
In 2010, when News of the World investigations editor Mazher Mahmood, posing as a sheik intent on helping her financially, approached her and expressed interest in backing her, she naively believed him. The recorded meeting between the duchess and Mahmood, where she appeared to offer access to Prince Andrew in exchange for help, would cause a furor and be highly embarrassing to the royal family.
Despite the uproar the sting caused, Sarah soldiered on, only to be met with more derision. In 2015, she appeared on QVC to hawk the Fusion Xcelerator food emulsifier, leading to scathing criticism.
“If it wasn’t such a disgraceful betrayal of the ancient title bestowed on her in good faith at her marriage by the Queen…it would actually be quite funny. But it’s not,” royal commentator Tom Sykes wrote in The Daily Beast. “It’s just another embarrassing reminder of the levels to which Fergie—a woman born to vast privilege and married to even more—has stooped in her determination to make a buck.”
But for better or worse, the duchess has continued to start businesses, leaving a tangled trail almost impossible to follow. In 2023, it was reported that the failed media investment company, Gate Ventures—where Ferguson served as one of the directors—was facing a £19 million lawsuit. It was previously alleged that Gate Ventures made “unexplained personal and business loans” of more than £500,000 to the duchess, including £232,000 to her lifestyle brand, Ginger & Moss. That same year, it was also announced that her independent production house, Vestapol Films, would be producing a film starring Riley Keough. No other information has been revealed.
While one can admire the Duchess of York’s eternal optimism, she is proof that while a royal title may open doors—and initially inspire investors—it does not guarantee business success. But with focus, talent, hard work, and lucky breaks, the right royal can go from exalted HRH to respected CEO.
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