1964–present
Melinda French Gates News: Philanthropist Releasing a New Memoir in April
Melinda French Gates is set to release her first memoir, The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward, on April 15. According to a press release, the book will provide a “rare window” into the 60-year-old philanthropist’s life.
“Over the last few years, I’ve experienced a lot of change—some of it exciting, some of it painful—so I’ve done a lot of thinking and learning about transitions,” French Gates told People this past October. “I write a lot about the people and ideas that have been helpful to me during moments of uncertainty, and the process of revisiting all that wisdom I’ve relied on has made me appreciate it even more.”
Some of these transitional moments include going to college, becoming a mother, and leaving the Gates Foundation in the wake of her divorce from Bill Gates. The Pivotal Ventures founder said she hopes her memoir will be “useful” to people who are going through life changes of their own. The Next Day marks her second book following 2019’s The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes The World.
Who Is Melinda French Gates?
Melinda French Gates is a billionaire philanthropist and businesswoman. She started her career as a Microsoft product developer and manager in 1987, where she met her ex-husband and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates. In 2000, the couple started the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the philanthropic organization that she successfully led for more than two decades before leaving in May 2024. French Gates currently heads Pivotal Ventures, an investment firm she founded in 2015 to fund organizations that advocate for women’s rights. She has written two books, including a memoir releasing in April 2025.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Melinda Ann French Gates
BORN: August 15, 1964
BIRTHPLACE: Dallas, Texas
SPOUSE: Bill Gates (1994–2021)
CHILDREN: Jennifer, Rory, and Phoebe
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo
Early Life and College
Melinda French Gates was born Melinda Ann French on August 15, 1964, in Dallas. She has three siblings: one older sister and two younger brothers. Melinda’s father, Ray French, was an aerospace engineer during her upbringing, while her mother, Elaine French, was a stay-at-home mom.
Elaine, who wished she had gone to college, placed a strong emphasis on her children’s higher education. To that end, the family spent weekends maintaining their rental properties as a means of earning the children’s tuition. Melinda developed an early interest in computers while taking an advanced math class at the Ursuline Academy, a Catholic school for girls.
She went on to pursue this interest in college, earning a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Duke University in 1986. The following year, she obtained a master’s in business administration, with a focus in economics, from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, while interning at IBM.
Microsoft
After graduating, French was offered a job at IBM but turned it down to work at Microsoft Corporation. She started out as a product manager in 1987, primarily developing multimedia and interactive products. Over the course of her nine years working for Microsoft, French worked her way up to general manager of information products. The products she worked on included the budget trip-planning website Expedia, the interactive movie guide Cinemania, and the multimedia digital encyclopedia Encarta. Two years after marrying Microsoft’s CEO Bill Gates, Melinda left the company in 1996 to focus on raising their children.
She later recalled that the Microsoft’s culture made her consider quitting early on in her career. “It was just so brash, so argumentative and competitive, with people fighting to the end on every point they were making and every piece of data they were debating,” she wrote in her 2019 book The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World. “It was as if every meeting, no matter how casual, was a dress rehearsal for the strategy review with Bill.”
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
In 2000, Melinda and Bill combined two family charitable organizations and contributed around $16 billion to form the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Although the foundation’s initial goal was to place computers and Microsoft products in libraries all over the United States, Melinda expanded the organization’s vision to include worldwide improvements in education. Their efforts also came to address global poverty and health issues. For their work, the couple was named Time’s 2005 Persons of the Year, alongside U2 singer and activist Bono.
In 2006, wealthy investor Warren Buffett made a landmark donation of $30 billion to the foundation. In anticipation of dividing its assets among the most pressing needs, Melinda restructured the organization into three departments: worldwide health, global development, and U.S. community and education. One of the foundation’s primary global health objectives has been to develop prevention strategies, vaccines, and treatments for diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation officially restated its mission in 2011 as “improving equity in four areas: global health, education, access to digital information via public libraries, and support for at-risk families in Washington State and Oregon.” The following year, Melinda pledged $560 million toward improving access to contraception for women in developing countries.
Demonstrating their support for progressive workplace policies, Melinda and Bill announced in 2015 that the foundation’s employees would receive up to a year’s paid leave after the birth or adoption of a child. In 2016, Barack Obama presented the couple with two Presidential Medals of Freedom in recognition of their philanthropic work.
Marking the 10th edition of the foundation’s annual letter, in February 2018, the pair decided to answer 10 of the toughest questions they face regarding their work. Addressing a question about adjusting to President Donald Trump’s policies, Melinda said it was important to maintain a strong relationship with the administration but suggested that Trump could set a better example as a role model. “I wish our president would treat people, and especially women, with more respect when he speaks and tweets,” she wrote.
Two years later, Melinda graded Trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic at a D-minus. The foundation devoted considerable resources toward combating the novel outbreak by pairing with leading pharmaceutical companies to fund the development of a vaccine. In March 2020, the foundation teamed up with the Wellcome Trust and Mastercard to pledge $125 million toward efforts to curb the spread of the outbreak.
The couple’s wealth and that of their partners and investors has allowed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to give extensively over the years. By 2023, the foundation had funded a total of $77.6 billion in grants.
Melinda’s major role in shaping and leading the organization eventually came to an end. Following her divorce from Bill, she stepped down from her role as co-chair of the foundation in May 2024. Upon her resignation and per the terms of the couple’s divorce settlement, she received $12.5 billion for her own philanthropic efforts to uplift women and families. After her departure, the organization was renamed the Gates Foundation.
Pivotal Ventures
In 2015, French Gates launched Pivotal Ventures, an investment firm aimed at funding organizations that support social progress. The main causes the firm focuses on include women’s political power, caregiving, paid family leave, women in technological innovation, and mental health support for young people.
After resigning from the Gates Foundation, she pledged to donate $1 billion of her own money to advance women’s rights and gender equality. In October 2024, she announced $250 million of her pledge will go to the Action for Women’s Health fund, which she launched through Pivotal Ventures. She will also spread another $200 million between 16 organizations that aim to advance women’s rights, including the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund and the National Domestic Workers Alliance. This portion of funding will also go to abortion rights groups, which French Gates said she feels the need to support in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“To have a law on the books since I was 9 years old, and to have it rolled back, and all the downstream consequences—like these women’s-health deserts now when we already have one of the highest maternal-mortality rates of high-income countries—I can’t not speak up about that,” she told Time in June 2024. “To see that my granddaughter will have fewer rights than I do? That doesn’t make any sense.”
Net Worth
As of March 13, 2025, French Gates has an estimated net worth of $30.1 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time tracker. The publication ranks her as the 58th wealthiest person in the world; she is among the top 10 for female billionaires on the list. French Gates received $12.5 billion as part of her divorce settlement.
Ex-Husband Bill Gates and Children
Melinda was married to Microsoft founder Bill Gates for nearly three decades. The pair first met at a sales meeting in Manhattan. At the time, Melinda was working as a product manager at Bill’s company. She found his sense of humor surprising and refreshing within the context of the corporate climate of the times. The CEO, who was nine years her senior, eventually asked her out in a parking lot with a couple of weeks’ notice. Initially put off by his over-planning, Melinda turned him down, but she soon realized his busy schedule made spontaneity difficult and eventually agreed to a date.
The couple dated for six years before Bill proposed to Melinda in 1993. They held their wedding on the Hawaiian island of Lanai in a private ceremony in January 1994. Melinda gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter named Jennifer, in April 1996. At that time, she decided to leave her job at Microsoft so she could focus on child-rearing and philanthropic efforts. The couple went on to have two more children. Their son, Rory, was born in May 1999 followed by their second daughter, Phoebe, in September 2002.
After 27 years of marriage, Melinda and Bill announced their separation in May 2021. “After a great deal of thought and a lot of work on our relationship, we have made the decision to end our marriage,” they wrote in a joint statement. “We no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives.” Their divorce was finalized that August—two weeks before Melinda’s 57th birthday.
Melinda told Time magazine in June 2024 that while the process of getting a divorce is “painful,” her life since “has been wonderful.” She has taken up skiing and traveling in addition to her philanthropic work, and after spending decades in her ex-husband’s secluded mansion on Lake Washington outside of Seattle, she is now lives in a neighborhood surrounded by stores and restaurants. “I absolutely love it,” Melinda said.
The philanthropist is reportedly dating entrepreneur Phillip Vaughn. The two were first spotted holding hands in New York City in October 2024, according to Page Six. Prior to that, she was linked to journalist Jon Du Pre in November 2022.
Books
In April 2019, French Gates released her first book, The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes The World, which shared lessons and stories from inspiring women and raised awareness to gender inquiries around the world. “How can we summon a moment of lift for human beings—and especially for women? Because when you lift up women, you lift up humanity,” she wrote.
Her latest work is an upcoming memoir titled The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward, set to be released April 15, 2025. The book is expected to detail personal stories and meaningful moments from her life.
Quotes
- I felt that I had a role to give some voice to the voiceless.
- If you are successful, it is because somewhere, sometime, someone gave you a life or an idea that started you in the right direction. Remember also that you are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.
- Every now and then I look at my friends and say, ‘Ooh, I wouldn't mind having that iPhone.’
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