Personal Life
Lee met Russell Simmons in November 1992 during New York City's Fashion Week. She was 17 and about to finish high school; he was 35 and a self-admitted ladies man. The couple were married by Simmons's brother, Pentecostal minister and rapper Joey "Reverend Run" Simmons of Run DMC, on the Caribbean island of St. Bart's on December 20, 1998. They have two daughters; Ming Lee Simmons (born January 21, 2000) and Aoki Lee Simmons (born August 16, 2002). In July 2004, Kimora was arrested and charged with reckless driving, eluding police, driving with a broken brake light, and marijuana possession after a two-mile chase that began near the Saddle River Police Station and ended outside her estate in Saddle River, New Jersey. On August 9, 2005, Simmons pled guilty to the reckless driving charge and was placed on six months probation. Kimora and Russell officially separated in March 2006.
By March 2007, Simmons was dating actor and model Djimon Hounsou, and in March 2008, she filed for divorce from Russell. The divorce was finalized in January 2009.
In the summer of 2008, Simmons and Hounsou participated in a traditional Benin wedding ceremony, and in May 2009, their son Kenzo Lee Hounsou was born. Simmons and Hounsou, who were never legally married in the United States, announced their separation in November 2012.
She established the Kimora Lee Simmons Scholarship Fund at her high school alma mater in St. Louis to provide college tuition support for academically successful girls with financial needs and is an active member of youth advocacy organizations including Amfar, The G&P Foundation, Keep a Child Alive, Hetrick-Martin Institute and Rush Philanthropic where she is on the Board of Directors. The mayor of St. Louis presented Simmons the key to the city and named March 18, 2008 "Kimora Day" in St. Louis.
Read more about this topic: Kimora Lee Simmons
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, personal and/or life:
“A man lives not only his personal life, as an individual, but also, consciously or unconsciously, the life of his epoch and his contemporaries.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving to crowds of unobservant unreflecting people to whom real life means nothing.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Parenting is the one area of my life where I can feel incompetent, out of control and like a total failure all of the time.”
—Attorney Father. As quoted in Reviving Ophelia, by Mary Pipher, ch. 4 (1994)