Melissa Cohen Biden
| |
|---|---|
Biden in 2021
| |
| Born | Melissa Batya Cohen c. 1986 (age 37–38)
Johannesburg, South Africa
|
| Education | Greenside Design Center College of Design University of California, Los Angeles |
| Occupation(s) | Activist, filmmaker |
| Spouse |
Jason Lavender
(m. 2011; div. 2014) (m. 2019) |
| Children | 1 |
| Family | Biden (by marriage) |
Melissa Batya Cohen Biden (born c. 1986)[1] is a South African‐American activist and documentary filmmaker. She is married to Hunter Biden, a son of U.S. President Joe Biden.
Melissa Cohen was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. She lived in an orphanage and was three years old when adopted by Lee and Zoe Cohen, a South African Jewish couple with three sons.[2][3] She attended King David High School Victory Park, a Jewish day school, before studying interior design at Greenside Design Center College of Design in South Africa.[4][5] She moved to Los Angeles when she was 21 years old to attend the University of California, Los Angeles.
While in Los Angeles, she met American businessman Jason Lavender. They married in 2011 and separated in 2014.[6] Cohen was an advocate for environmental and nature conservation groups.[4]
After her divorce, Cohen launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a documentary about tribal communities.[7]
In 2019, she met Hunter Biden, son of then-former U.S. Vice President and presidential candidate Joe Biden, through friends. She helped Hunter Biden seek treatment for substance use disorder.[8] They have matching "Shalom" tattoos on their left biceps.[2] On May 16, 2019, six days after meeting, they married in a ceremony at her apartment in the Hollywood Hills.[9][10][11] In 2019, she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.[1]
Their son, Beau, was born in March 2020 in Los Angeles.[12][13] She is the step-mother to Biden's three adult daughters - Naomi, Finnegan and Maisey - with his first wife and to the daughter, Navy Joan Roberts, he had in 2018 with Lunden Roberts.[14]
She attended the Inauguration of Joe Biden in 2021.[13]
She and her family live in Malibu, California.[15]
In June 2024, she accompanied her husband to his trial on federal gun charges, where he was found guilty on all 3 counts in Wilmington, Delaware. During a break in the trial on June 4, she confronted Garrett Ziegler, a former aide to President Donald Trump, outside the courtroom. Cohen approached Ziegler, pointed her finger at him and said in a loud voice, "You have no right to be here, you Nazi piece of shit." Her husband had filed a lawsuit against Ziegler, who has been compiling a searchable database of emails discovered on Hunter Biden's laptop, in September 2023.[16][17]
