Yolanda Hadid
Quick Facts
Biography
Yolanda Hadid (/həˈdiːd/; née van den Herik; formerly Foster; born 11 January 1964) is a Dutch-American television personality and former model. She is best known as a star of the American reality-television show The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. She is mother to IMG models Gigi, Bella, and Anwar Hadid.
Early life
Yolanda van den Herik was born and raised in Papendrecht, Netherlands, to a family of Christian background. She has a brother named Leo. When she was seven years old, her father died in a car accident, leaving her mother, Ans van den Herik (1941-2019) to raise the two children.
Career
Dutch designer Frans Molenaar asked Van den Herik to replace one of his models at a show, where she was discovered by Eileen Ford and signed a contract with Ford Models. Afterwards, Van den Herik modeled in Paris, Milan, Sydney, Cape Town, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Hamburg. She modeled for 15 years before wanting to settle down and start a family. In 1994, Van den Herik moved to Los Angeles to start her family after meeting and marrying Mohamed Hadid.
Her memoir Believe Me: My Battle with the Invisible Disability of Lyme Disease, was published in 2017. On January 11, 2018, her reality TV-show competition Making a Model with Yolanda Hadid premiered on Lifetime, which had been developed under the working title Model Moms.
Personal life
Van den Herik's first marriage was to Mohamed Hadid, a real estate developer, from 1994 until 2000. The couple has three children together, Jelena "Gigi" (born 23 April 1995), Isabella "Bella" (born 9 October 1996), and Anwar (born 22 June 1999).
Van den Herik married musician, composer and producer David Foster in Beverly Hills, California on 11 November 2011, after becoming engaged on Christmas Eve, 2010.
In 2012, Van den Herik was diagnosed with Lyme disease, as she has stated multiple times on several episodes of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. In December 2012, she reported that she was having a port implanted in her arm to help treat her chronic Lyme disease. In April 2013, she had the port removed. In January 2015, she revealed that, as a consequence of the illness, she had "lost the ability to read, write, or even watch TV".
On 1 December 2015, Van den Herik announced she and David Foster planned to divorce. The divorce was finalized in May 2017.
