Topline
Actress Salma Hayek revealed this week she does not have a prenuptial agreement to divide assets between herself and her mega-billionaire husband François-Henri Pinault, but told the Wall Street Journal she's on a mission to make a fortune of her own and feels under "pressure to make a certain amount of money."
Key Facts
Hayek, 58, married her husband Pinault, 62, in 2009 after three years of dating and was instantly rocketed into the world of the ultra wealthy (Pinault heads luxury group Kering and is worth more than $20 billion).
The pair have one daughter together, 17-year-old Valentina, and keep their finances separate, Hayek told Wall Street Journal Magazine.
The actress said she has no prenup with Pinault and works to support "a lot of the aspects of my life and myself," with an ambition to make more money going forward that her husband finds "kind of sexy.”
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Surprising Fact
Both Hayek and Pinault come from wealth originally—her father was an oil executive and Pinault inherited the retail conglomerate from his father—but Hayek said living among the ultra-wealthy thrust money to the forefront in a way she didn’t expect. “To me, the excitement about having a lot of money was that I didn’t have to think about money, and it turned out all people wanted to talk to me about was money,” Hayek told WSJ Magazine.
Key Background
Pinault inherited a retail conglomerate called Pinault-Printemps-Redoute from his father in 2005 and has since turned it into Kering, a luxury group that owns brands like Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta. The $21.2 billion (2023 revenue) company also owns watch brand Girard-Perregaux. In addition to Kering, Pinault is the president of the investment firm Group Artémis and the family owns Christie's Auction House, the Creative Artists Agency talent agency, Château Latour winery in France and a 3,000-piece art collection with works by Picasso, Mondrian and Koons. Hayek is Pinault's second wife and Valentina is his fourth child. He has two children with his first wife, Dorothée Lepère, and one with supermodel Linda Evangelista, whom he dated for less than six months in 2005.
Forbes Valuation
Pinault was ranked as the 99th richest person in the world as of Wednesday with an estimated net worth of $20.6 billion.
Tangent
In addition to major acting roles in movies like "From Dusk Till Dawn," "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" and "Frida," which made her the first Mexican actress to be nominated for the best acting Academy Award, Hayek has run Ventanarosa Productions since 1999. The company's credits include "Ugly Betty," "Santa Evita" and "Frida,” which was nominated for six Oscars. Hayek has also secured endorsement deals with brands like Revlon, Avon cosmetics, Cartier and Kahlúa. Hayek has also embarked on several philanthropic missions—she built the Kering Foundation, which supports women's causes like combating gender-based violence and sexual abuse, with her husband and founded Gucci Chime for Change, which promotes gender equality, with Beyoncé in 2013.
