Yolanda Foster

In 1994, she met Mohamed Hadid, a real estate developer, fell in love and got married to him. The same year, she moved to Los Angeles and started her family with two inherited two stepdaughters, Marielle and Alana, from Hadid’s previous marriage.

In 1995, she gave birth to her first child with Hadid, a daughter, Jelena Noura "Gigi" Hadid. The couple was blessed with their second daughter, Bella Hadid, in 1996. Their last child together, a son, Anwar Hadid, was born in 1999.

Unfortunately the couple had a short-lived marriage which ended in a divorce in 2000. The following year, she moved to Montecito and started a new life as a single mother with her three young children. For the next few years, she was keenly involved in raising them with utmost affection and attention.

She was born as Yolanda van den Herik, on January 11, 1964, in Papendrecht, a small farmer’s town in Netherlands. She was raised along with her brother, Leo, and as a child, she loved to ride horses, milk cows and other barn activities.

Her father was killed in a car crash when she was seven years old, leaving her mother to raise the children by herself. Widowed at the age of 30, her mother took up the challenge and learned to be an independent mother, devoting her life to the children.

At the age of 13, she decided to become a provider for her family and took up the job of a dishwasher at the local Chinese restaurant. It was her first weekend job and a tiring one too which consisted of washing hundreds of dishes and buckets of silverware.

Two years later, she took on a part-time job selling cheese and sandwich meats at the Hema, a local grocery store, and was soon promoted to the post of cashier. With the money earned from the job, she managed to get through her hectic school, riding, and barn work schedule.

At the age of 16, she did a hair show for her friend, Dorothy, in Amsterdam and it was there that she was first asked to walk the ramp in a fashion show. A Dutch designer, Frans Molenaar, requested her to replace one of his models and go on the runway.

Impressed by her confidence and poise, Eileen Ford, owner of Ford Models contacted and signed her. For the next 15 years she modeled and resided all around the world in major cities including Paris, Milan, Sydney, Cape Town, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Hamburg.

In 1994, she got married and gave birth to three children in subsequent years. Then she got divorced and lived as a single mother for several years before she entered into wedlock for the second time.

After her second marriage, she emerged as an entrepreneur and has been actively involved in her company, ‘Hopelessly Romantic’, which helps men and women "get wise and keep their romance alive!"

During the 2010s she also started appearing on ‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’, an American reality television series that focuses on the personal and professional lives of several women residing in Beverly Hills, California.