Kimora Lee (born on May 4, 1975; née Perkins, previously Simmons) is an American fashion designer, television personality and former fashion model. She was discovered when she was a teenager and subsequently signed by Chanel, after which she walked the runway for major fashion houses including Fendi and Valentino and appeared on the covers of Vogue and Elle. In 1999, she founded the international lifestyle brand Baby Phat.
She has entered the realm of reality television with her family, taking part in the Style Network reality programme Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane (2007–211), Kimora: House of Fab (2013), and is currently appearing in Kimora: Back in the Fab Lane (2025–present). Age Kimora Lee Perkins was born on May 4, 1975 (making her 51 years old) in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. Biography Kimora Lee Perkins was born in St. Louis to an African-American father and a mother of Japanese and Korean descent.
While growing up in Florissant, a suburb of northern St. Louis in Missouri, Simmons was often the victim of bullying at school. Due to her height 5’10” (177.8 cm) by the age of ten and her multiethnic background, she had difficulty gaining confidence and, as she herself put it, felt “different”. In order to help build up Kimora’s self-confidence, her mother enrolled her in some modeling classes when she was eleven.
Two years afterwards, at a model search event in Kansas City, Simmons was spotted by Marie-Christine Kollock, who was the event’s organizer and at the same time an agent with the well-known Paris modeling agency, Glamour. Kollock then sent her to Paris, where she soon won the favour of the leaders in the fashion industry and was able to begin her modeling career properly. Simmons graduated from Lutheran North High School in St. Louis, Missouri.
She went back to school in 2017 and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business and Entrepreneurial Affairs from the Barney School of Business at the University of Hartford in Hartford, Connecticut in 2018. Personal life Kimora Perkins got married to Russell Simmons in December 1998; they separated in 2009 and have two daughters together. In May 2009 Simmons had her first son with the actor and model Djimon Hounsou.
It was stated in February 2014 that she had married the investment banker Tim Leissner, and in April 2015 their son was born. When Simmons married Leissner at that time, he was still legally married to his former wife; in order to persuade Simmons, he forged copies of the divorce documents and also set up an email address in his ex-wife’s name. He kept up the correspondence for more than a year and carried on using the email account for several years.
In 2018 Leissner pleaded guilty as a result of his involvement in the 1MDB scandal and admitted to being a double bigamist. In 2020 Simmons took in a son and thus became the mother of five children. It was made public in February 2022 that Simmons and Leissner were at odds with one another. In 2023 Simmons brought a legal action against Leissner, asserting that “the shares worth about US$93 million which he was required to forfeit as a result of his 1MDB guilty plea actually belong to her”.
Philanthropy Simmons has been a member of the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. In 2008 Simmons provided her voice and her image to PETA as a supporter of the organization’s ‘Be an Angel to Dogs’ campaign, a campaign that advocated for more humane treatment when it came to the care and ownership of household pets. As part of the campaign, Simmons was shown wearing angel wings designed by the costume designer Martin Izquierdo, who is famous for designing the angel wings worn by models at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
She has also taken part in protests with PETA. Furthermore, she donated $20,000 to PETA’s Angel for Animals Project, a project that supplies strong, custom-built dog houses to dogs in need. At the homecoming ceremony taking place at Washington University in St. Louis on March 14, 2008, the mayor of St. Louis acknowledged Simmons’s services to society by handing her the key to the city and proclaimed March 14 to be Kimora Day.
In 2014 Simmons set up the Kimora Lee Simmons Scholarship Fund at FIT by making a personal donation of one million dollars to help students from underserved communities who wish to have careers in fashion. Furthermore, Simmons supports amfAR, The G&P Foundation, Keep a Child Alive, and the Hetrick-Martin Institute. In 2018 Simmons carried out humanitarian work aiding refugees and migrant women and children who were escaping violence, persecution and natural disasters in their home countries.
Having taken on the role of Lead Global Ambassador with the intimate health nonprofit The Unmentionables, she has assisted in funding the distribution of reusable female hygienic products and supplies to communities of migrant and refugee women arriving in Europe via Greece. In 2017 Simmons and her family went to Texas with The Unmentionables to provide aid after the devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey.
More… In 2018 Simmons gave a speech at an event organised by The Global Innovation Coalition for Change (GICC) in cooperation with UN Women with the aim of bringing about wide-scale change in the industry and of promoting women and girls in the fields of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. She currently holds the position of Global Innovator for Change and is campaigning for gender equality in the workplace.
In September 2018 she teamed up with UN Women and GICC to help launch the Gender Innovation Principles and the She Innovates calls to action. Career Highlights She was discovered when she was young and then became a muse to Karl Lagerfeld, modelling for various luxury houses such as Chanel, Fendi, and Valentino. Baby Phat: The iconic urban fashion and lifestyle brand was launched in 1999 as part of Phat Fashions and then reacquired by the company in 2019.
For Business & TV, she held the positions of President and Creative Director at JustFab from 2011 to 2015, launched her KLS line, and appeared in reality programmes such as Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane and Kimora: Back in the Fab Lane. Net Worth Kimora Lee Simmons is a well-known American fashion designer, businesswoman, and television personality and her net worth is estimated to be between $80 million and $200 million.
