Ivanka’s parents married in April 1977 and welcomed their first child, Donald Jr., later that year. Ivanka, who once clarified that her name is the Czech diminutive of “Ivana,” was born in 1981. Her younger brother, Eric, arrived in 1984, completing the family. Together, the siblings grew up in a household where discipline and ambition were cornerstones of their upbringing.

“I was all of a sudden in the prison of boarding-school life, and all my friends in New York were having fun,” she further divulged. Adding to the adjustment, her mother insisted she pay her own phone bills.

For Ivanka, the experience was more about exploring new opportunities and breaking up routine. Although she values what modeling brought to her life, she feels constrained by the lasting impression it left. “That’s how they remember me, and I want to be a little bit more serious than that,” she admitted.

The family also enjoyed an opulent lifestyle that included a 50-room triplex, a 45-room oceanfront estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, and the iconic Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach. At Mar-a-Lago, her personal bathroom—one of 33—was adorned with hand-painted tiles by Walt Disney.

After graduating summa cum laude from The Wharton School with an economics degree, she briefly worked for developer Bruce Ratner before joining the family business. Though initially reluctant, Ivanka appeared on “The Apprentice,” explaining, “For ‘Trump’ to be sustainable it couldn’t just be about my father. It has to be about us as a family.”

In 2007, she met investor Jared Kushner at a business lunch orchestrated by mutual friends who assumed their connection would be purely professional. “Whenever we see them we’re like, ‘The best deal we ever made!’” the businesswoman stated.