Melania Trump's $17m Year: Where the Money Went

Melania Trump’s Financial Journey as First Lady

On her 51st birthday, Melania Trump found a unique way to celebrate by solving the problem of what to gift a first lady. In 2021, Republican supporters received an email that read: “We know how much the First Lady means to YOU so we’re going to give you ONE MORE chance to sign her card, but you must ACT FAST!” This was followed by a page asking for donations to the party’s coffers, with the $100 option pre-selected.

This might have been a sign of things to come. During her first year back in the White House, Melania, now 56, has been busy monetising the role of First Lady. According to a newly released federal report, her business earnings in 2025 were over $17.2m (£13m), while her husband made $2bn (£1.5bn). This has raised questions about potential conflicts of interest for the first family.

It's a far cry from the image of "Poor Melania" that dominated Trump’s first term. Back then, her business income was rarely worth reporting on – the most significant deal was with Getty in 2017, for the use of family photos, which earned the first lady between $100,000 (£75,000) and $1m (£745,000).

So where have Melania’s new millions, channelled through her own Palm Beach-based holding company, MKT World LLC, come from?

The short answer: Jeff Bezos. The Melania movie, bought and promoted by Amazon, contributed $10.7m (£8m) to her revenue through a licensing agreement. As Melania explained while promoting the film at the New York Stock Exchange, “superior storytelling drives culture and in turn moves markets.”

Amazon MGM reportedly spent $35m (£26m) on marketing for the movie, directed by Brett Ratner, which is now available to stream on Prime Video. It depicts Melania in the 20 days before her husband’s second presidential term began and her “transition from private citizen to first lady.” On Rotten Tomatoes, its rating among “verified ticket buyers” is 99 per cent, but the critics’ score is 10 per cent, with one reviewer calling it “paper-thin, superficial, and interminably boring.” Despite the high production and marketing budget, it made just $16.6m (£12.5m) at the box office.

As for the rest? Around $6m came from “the sale of non-fungible token (NFTs) and other collectibles.” If Melania has a currency, it’s digital: her personal website sells limited edition photo collections, such as “On the Move” – think the first lady pictured in various dynamic settings – by photographer Regine Mahaux; sold out at $195 (£145). There’s a $600 (£450) gold-plated “Vote Freedom” necklace, as worn by Melania in her film. Christmas decorations go for $90 (£67) and patriotic digital art, based on US landmarks, sells for $50 (£37) a pop.

She also has her own cryptocurrency – $Melania – which launched in January 2025. Plus, she’s known to have received around $250,000 (£186,000) for speaking engagements of the sort that previous first ladies might have done gratis.

Then there are her literary earnings. Melania made $500,000 (£373,000) last year from her autobiography, also called Melania, which was published in October 2024 and sold 85,349 hardback copies in its first week, according to Circana BookScan.

(Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir, Becoming, sold 636,696 and went straight to number one in the New York Times bestseller chart). If you missed out, worry not, $250 (£186) collector’s editions are still available on melaniatrump.com.

All this, of course, is on top of Melania’s past earnings. It’s been estimated that she was worth $50m (£37m) on meeting Trump in 1998, when she was 28 and he 52 – money largely made from her successful modelling career. Her affordable jewellery line sold out on QVC in under 45 minutes in 2010.

Not bad for the daughter of a car mechanic and pattern maker from the small Slovenia town of Sevnica. But then, says host of the BBC’s Americast podcast and its longtime North America Editor Justin Webb, it’s easy to underestimate Melania Knauss.

“I’ve always felt that she was a more substantial person than people gave her credit for. Someone who’s involved in her own endeavours,” he says. “I raised eyebrows on Americast by saying she was the first truly feminist first lady, but I wanted to draw attention to the fact that she is quite separate from Trump and lives quite a separate existence.”

Perhaps it’s simply that we’re not used to seeing first ladies make significant money while still in office? Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush (who was reportedly paid an advance of between $3.5-$5m (£2.6m-£3.7m) for her 2010 memoir Spoken from the Heart) waited until after their White House years before publishing their memoirs. Jill Biden made some money in office, continuing to teach English at North Virginia Community College, earning $85,985 (£64,072) in 2023.

“Unlike first ladies before her, Melania has decided to use her role to make millions,” says Kate Andersen Brower, author of bestselling book First Women. “To be sure, first ladies do often write memoirs, get paid for speaking engagements and the like, but that’s always been after they’ve left the White House. The idea of being first lady is devoting yourself to a cause and using your tremendous influence to do good.”

Is this what Melania meant all along when she said that she wanted to redefine the role? After all, it was whispered that one of her first acts as FLOTUS was to use her husband’s 2016 election victory to boost the value of her pre-nup deal, securing her future and that of their son Barron, now aged 20 (although a spokesperson denied this at the time).

“The family measures themselves by money, but what she wants to do with it, who knows?” asks Webb. “I very much doubt that she’d run for office herself – that, traditionally, would be the reason you’d raise those sums of money, to give yourself a war chest. But it’s not clear to me that she particularly wants to do anything with it.”

Indeed, it’s not easy to pin down what Melania might spend her millions on. There’s her personal stylist, Hervé Pierre, who’s known to shop for her in Dior, Bergdorf Goodman, and Saks Fifth Avenue. It’s been suggested that she spent more than $1m on clothing during her first spell in the White House – wearing a $50,000 (£37,000) Dolce & Gabbana coat to meet the spouses of world leaders at a G7 summit in Italy and a $10,000 (£7,500) Michael Kors skirt suit in Congress. There are Birkins and a shoe collection rumoured to be worth $100,000 (£74,500).

In January 2016, she discreetly bought a 1,052-square-foot, 1 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom, apartment on the 33rd floor of Trump Tower in New York, for $1.5m (£1.2m). Some reports suggest she owns rental properties in Slovenia, but this has never been confirmed.

As for relaxation? In 2018, she caused a firestorm after it emerged she’d spent $64,000 (£48,000) of taxpayer money on a Palm Beach spa break, with a private jet costing more than $16,000 (£12,000) an hour. Since then, her attempts at self care have stayed largely under wraps.

Melania’s money-making, says Webb, might be best taken in the context of the Trump presidency, which seems to revel in being open for business.

“It’s possible she feels that in order to be respected in the wider Trump clan, she’s got to be making money herself,” he says. “For all that people like to criticise her and suggest that she’s strange, and their marriage is eccentric, actually, she’s an engine for success – at least measured in Trump terms.”

Or as Melania herself puts it in Melania – the film, not the book, do keep up – “as first lady, the real nobility is becoming stronger than the person I was yesterday”. And if not stronger, why not richer, too?

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