A royal wedding featuring a bride who once lived in her car may sound more like a fairy tale than real life. But Arian Simone Reed is living proof it can happen.
On May 23, Reed, the first-ever queen of the Dawa people, an Indigenous community in Africa’s Ivory Coast, married Benjamin Salah Mougarbel, a Ghanaian businessman, at Christiansborg Castle, also known as Osu Castle, a 17th-century fortress in Accra, Ghana. The ceremony was one of several events that spanned five days, attended by 400 guests, half of whom traveled internationally for the celebration.
Reed has been a queen since October 2022, when traditional leaders from Grand-Bereby, a coastal town in southwestern Ivory Coast, proposed she become Her Majesty Queen Wa of the Kingdom of Dawa, an act of gratitude for her local philanthropic work.
“I thought it was a joke at first,” Reed said, before she accepted her 20-karat gold crown and was bestowed land, which she describes as “substantial beachfront, beautiful land.”
“I thought they would give me a plaque or something,” for establishing the town’s first elementary school, the Arian Simone Fearless Leadership Academy, which opened the same month as her coronation. Instead, she was given a crash course in the local cultural practices and her royal responsibilities, which include partnering with Ivorian officials to review the town’s needs and ensure education, housing and the overall welfare of the community continue to thrive.
Her enthronement came as a plot twist in a life that, at the time, had been built on American entrepreneurship.
Reed, 45, grew up in Detroit. Her parents, Gregory Reed, a tax attorney, and Verladia Blount, who was a computer engineer, introduced her to local African-American leaders early.
“Rosa Parks was a consistent figure in my upbringing,” Reed said. Her father represented Parks and Aretha Franklin, among other notables. “If somebody was in the ‘Who’s Who of Detroit,’ we definitely knew them.”
During college at Florida A&M University, where Reed earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in business, she opened a women’s clothing store in a Tallahassee, Fla., mall. She was 20, and it was a learning experience. “I had to raise capital for it, and I got rejection after rejection after rejection,” she said. She promised herself that one day she would become the business investor she had been looking for.
After college, she landed a job in product placement with Apple Bottoms, a fashion line founded by the rapper Nelly, in Los Angeles. But the job and the security that came with it lasted only a month before the company was sold, and she was laid off. No longer able to afford her apartment, she spent seven months living out of her car and on friends’ floors.
But she wasn’t ready to give up on a career there. In her 30 days at Apple Bottoms, she had gotten the brand on Oprah Winfrey’s show in 2004. “People noticed the work I did,” she said. “Someone reached out and said, ‘You would be awesome at P.R.’”
She spent much of 2004 developing AR PR, a marketing company, even while she didn’t have an address. By the time she closed the firm a decade later, her clients had included Sony Pictures and Lil Wayne.
In 2018, Reed made good on her promise to be the kind of investor she once needed and built Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm that invests in companies owned by women of color. In 2023, the Fearless Fund made headlines when it was sued for discrimination over a grant program it offered specifically to Black women. The following year, the case was settled. Reed said she had been “built for” such cases: “I grew up around very strong civil rights leaders,” she said.
She is still the firm’s chief executive and now splits her time between its headquarters in Atlanta and Accra.
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By the time Mougarbel met Reed on March 28, 2025, at a flower shop in Accra, he had learned of her ascension to the Dawa throne via the internet. Mougarbel, whose grandfather once held a royal title in Ghana, was immediately intrigued.
The possibility that Reed might one day become his wife wasn’t entirely far-fetched, either. A mutual friend who introduced them, Andrew Jonah, had already prayed that the two would fall in love and marry. That was enough to convince Mougarbel and Reed, both born-again Christians, that it might be fate.
“Faith plays a very strong role in our lives,” Reed said.
Mougarbel added that he “knew something positive was going to come from us meeting.”
Mougarbel, 43, was born in Accra to an entrepreneurial family. His father, Mohammed Mougarbel, died when he was 3; his mother, Fatima Nelson, lived in Togo. He and his older sister and brother were raised by extended family, including grandparents, aunts and uncles.
Before he reached adolescence, he was working weekends at Mougarbels, the family’s chain of electronics stores. When he was 12, his aunt gave him a Mougarbels of his own to run. He managed that business throughout college at Wisconsin University International College in Accra, where he earned a bachelor’s in business. Before he completed the degree, he was also selling real estate.
“Like Arian, I’ve always had an entrepreneur mentality,” he said. He is now the chief executive of BHC Music, a tech platform to help artists monetize their work, and BHC Drinks, a hot chocolate company. He has 14-year-old twin daughters from a previous marriage.
Last year, Jonah, the couple’s mutual friend, introduced the two at Blossom, his sister Tamara’s flower shop, sensing that they were both ready for a lasting commitment. He also knew he had to move quickly to get them into the same room.
Reed had flown to Accra on March 27 after attending a ceremony in Grand-Bereby. She was headed back to Atlanta the following night but stopped at Blossom before heading to the airport. She called Jonah, who asked her to wait there until he arrived.
“He said, ‘I have somebody for you to meet,’” she said. “I said, ‘Andrew, I don’t have any makeup on. He said it wouldn’t matter. He was correct.”
After 10 minutes of chatting, Mougarbel decided to cancel his meetings, and they headed to their first date at the Polo Club in Accra.
Mougarbel didn’t mind that Reed was barefaced and in sweats, ready to board the red-eye to the United States. “She doesn’t need to try hard,” he said. Reed, meanwhile, was impressed with Mougarbel’s style. “He had on white linen and Cartier and Van Cleef jewelry,” she said.
Soon after she was back in Atlanta, an elaborate second date was on the books. Mougarbel was going on a weeklong business trip to London in late April. He asked Reed to join him.
“He planned everything,” she said, including their stay at the Mayfair Hotel in Central London, dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants and shopping on New Bond Street. In the three weeks leading up to the trip, they talked daily on FaceTime.
“We spoke about everything,” Mougarbel said. “Business, what we want to achieve, family. Everything people talk about when they want to settle down.” A week after the London trip, after Reed had returned to Atlanta, he bought her a ticket to Accra. She stayed two months.
By the end of July, Mougarbel had already spoken to Reed’s parents and quietly planned a proposal before leaving for a business trip to Dubai. He had been there a week before the couple decided they missed each other too much to be apart that long. When Reed joined him, on Aug. 4, she walked into their room at the St. Regis Hotel to find a heart-shaped arrangement of rose petals on the bed. At its center was a box containing a three-carat diamond engagement ring fit for a queen, with a large center stone surrounded by smaller diamonds. Reed screamed, overwhelmed with joy, when she opened it, she said.
It had been less than six months since they met. But “nothing felt rushed,” Reed said. “Every bit of timing felt perfect.”
Planning a royal wedding takes a while. In addition to what Ghanaians call a “white wedding,” in which Western customs such as a long white gown and spoken vows are featured, couples also take part in a traditional Ghanaian engagement ceremony, also known as the traditional wedding.
Reed and Mougarbel’s five-day celebration started May 20 with a welcome party for all 400 guests at Aya, a luxury restaurant in Accra.
The next day, guests arrived at the home of Hawa Mahama Agyemang, the sister of Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, for the engagement ceremony. During the celebration, Reed was presented with a dowry from Mougarbel’s family. Reed’s family elders, including her parents and aunts and uncles, as well as two traditional “negotiators,” inspected dowry items including fabrics, a Bible, shoes, bags, drinks and an outlay of cash.
In keeping with ancestral practices, the Mougarbels also presented Reed with a decorated stool to sit on, symbolizing her acceptance into their family.
On May 23, Reed and Mougarbel were legally married by the pastor, author and motivational speaker Touré Roberts, a mutual friend from Los Angeles, at their white wedding at Osu Castle. Reed wore a fitted white gown by the Ivorian designer Elie Kuame. Her entrance to the castle’s courtyard, where the Christian ceremony took place, was accompanied by the 25-member National Symphony Orchestra of Ghana.
Once they were pronounced married, Mougarbel, who wore a military green suit by the Sierra Leonean designer Bintumani, had less to say about the grandeur of the occasion than the joy he felt at becoming Reed’s husband. “I was looking forward to her saying ‘I do’ the most,” he said.
“Everything else was just fun,” he added.
On This Day
When May 23, 2026
Where Osu Castle, Accra, Ghana
Grateful At a reception held in the castle gardens, traditional dishes such as deep-fried fish and jollof, a one-pot rice dish, were served. Other events during the five-day gathering included a beach night at a local resort and a May 24 send-off for guests the couple called a “Thanksgiving brunch” at the home of the religious leader Archbishop Duncan-Williams.
Brilliant, Bound For locals, the engagement ceremony is the more binding of the two formal events, emphasizing the union of the two families and celebrating traditions like the wearing of colorful kente clothing. Reed wore three dresses for the engagement. Mougarbel wore an Agbada, a flowing traditional robe.
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