Susanne Gregard: The Untold Story of Dodi Al-Fayed’s First Wife

Susanne Gregard occupies an unusual place in celebrity history. She is remembered less for her own considerable body of work as a model, actress, and artist, and more for eight months in the late 1980s when she was married to Dodi Al-Fayed, the man who would later die alongside Diana, Princess of Wales, in a Paris car crash in 1997. That single chapter has followed Susanne Gregard for nearly four decades, overshadowing a career and a life that, on their own terms, are worth examining closely.

This piece traces Susanne Gregard’s path from a childhood in Southern California through the modeling world of the early 1980s, into a whirlwind romance with one of the era’s most talked-about young millionaires, and out the other side into a long second marriage, motherhood, and a quieter creative practice that continues today. Some details of Susanne Gregard’s early biography come from limited secondary sources and should be read as reported rather than definitively confirmed.

Susanne Gregard’s Early Life and Family Background

Susanne Gregard was reportedly born on April 1, 1960, in Long Beach, California, making her an Aries by birth sign. According to available accounts, her father, Palle Gregard, worked for a European airline, which suggests a household with at least some exposure to international travel and cosmopolitan circles from an early age. Her mother, Lise Gregard, is described in the same accounts as a homemaker who has since passed away. Susanne Gregard reportedly grew up with a brother named Ken, though little else about her childhood or education has been publicly documented.

The scarcity of detail here is itself telling. Unlike many public figures who cultivate a visible personal narrative, Susanne Gregard has spent most of her adult life deliberately out of the spotlight, and the biographical record reflects that choice. What is known comes largely from a handful of interviews she gave decades ago and from scattered social media posts in more recent years, rather than from any sustained media presence.

Susanne Gregard’s Modeling and Acting Career

Susanne Gregard entered the modeling industry in the early 1980s, reportedly appearing in publications with the stature of Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, and Vogue. Breaking into that tier of fashion magazines during the period was no small feat, and it placed Susanne Gregard within a competitive, image-driven industry at a moment when the American modeling scene was expanding rapidly alongside a booming fashion media landscape.

Beyond print modeling, Susanne Gregard also pursued acting. Her most notable screen credit is the 1985 romantic comedy Key Exchange, in which she played a character known as Gym Honey. The film, based on a stage play of the same name, explored the anxieties of young professionals navigating commitment and independence in New York City, and it fit comfortably into the mid-1980s wave of relationship-driven comedies. Susanne Gregard also appeared on the television talent competition Star Search around 1983 or 1984, a program that served as an early launching pad for numerous entertainers of that generation.

Taken together, Susanne Gregard’s modeling and acting credits describe a working professional in the entertainment industry during a formative decade for American fashion and film, even if her name never became a household one on the strength of that work alone.

How Susanne Gregard Met Dodi Al-Fayed

The relationship that would define Susanne Gregard’s public identity began in 1985, when she met Dodi Al-Fayed. At the time, Susanne Gregard was around 25 years old, and Dodi, the son of businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, was roughly 31. Dodi was already established as a film producer and heir to a substantial family fortune tied to his father’s ownership of Harrods, the London department store.

By several accounts, Dodi pursued Susanne Gregard with considerable persistence, flying her to the United Kingdom on the Concorde for weekend visits and arranging for her to model for Harrods so that professional obligations, rather than personal invitation alone, would draw her across the Atlantic. He introduced her to his family, including his father, and the courtship unfolded amid a degree of luxury that few of Susanne Gregard’s peers in the modeling world would have experienced.

According to reporting from the period, Dodi proposed to Susanne Gregard on New Year’s Eve in 1986, and the couple married shortly afterward in a small, private ceremony attended by close family and friends. For a brief window, Susanne Gregard was married to one of the more prominent young figures in international high society.

The Marriage of Susanne Gregard and Dodi Al-Fayed

The marriage between Susanne Gregard and Dodi Al-Fayed lasted only about eight months before the couple separated in August 1987. In interviews given years later, Susanne Gregard suggested that the split came down to a fundamental mismatch in temperament and lifestyle rather than any single dramatic event. She described herself as someone who valued a quiet, private existence, while Dodi thrived on constant travel, high-profile social engagements, and the trappings of extraordinary wealth.

Susanne Gregard has recounted small, human moments from the marriage that paint a more intimate picture than the tabloid framing of a millionaire’s wife might suggest. In one recollection, she described asking Dodi to pick up medicine and food while she was sick, only for him to return delighted, having realized it was the first time in his 31 years that he had ever set foot in a grocery store. In another anecdote, she recalled a candlelit dinner Dodi had carefully arranged that ended in laughter after the table collapsed and an entire turkey landed on the floor.

Notably, Susanne Gregard has consistently spoken about Dodi Al-Fayed with warmth rather than bitterness in the years since their divorce, describing him as romantic, thoughtful, and someone who did not take life too seriously despite the pressures of his position. The couple did not have children together, and the divorce was reportedly amicable. Dodi went on to be linked with several other high-profile women in the years that followed, including reported relationships with Brooke Shields, Winona Ryder, and Tina Sinatra, before his relationship with Diana, Princess of Wales, brought him a level of global attention that dwarfed anything that came before it. Dodi Al-Fayed and Diana died together in a car accident in Paris on August 31, 1997, an event that remains one of the most scrutinized news stories of the late twentieth century.

Susanne Gregard’s Life After Dodi Al-Fayed

Following her divorce from Dodi, Susanne Gregard largely stepped back from the kind of visibility that had briefly surrounded her. She eventually met Philippe Quilici, a French-born surgeon who reportedly studied at a university in the Mediterranean region and went on to practice medicine in Southern California. Susanne Gregard and Philippe Quilici married on May 22, 1992, and have remained together since, marking a partnership of more than three decades.

The couple settled in Los Angeles, California, where Susanne Gregard has built a family life alongside her artistic pursuits. Susanne Gregard and Philippe Quilici have two sons together. Their older son, Max, was reportedly born in September 1993 and has pursued a career as a jazz guitarist, including work associated with the musician ZZ Ward. Their younger son, Henry, reportedly born in August 1996, studied film and television production at the University of Southern California. Susanne Gregard has occasionally shared glimpses of this family life on social media, including birthday messages for her husband and updates on her sons’ milestones, though she has generally kept the volume of such posts modest compared to figures who actively court public attention.

Susanne Gregard’s Career as a Media Artist

In the decades since her modeling and acting work, Susanne Gregard has shifted her creative energy toward visual art and photography. Working out of Los Angeles, Susanne Gregard has developed a body of work centered on floral imagery, particularly a technique involving flowers submerged in water that she has described as growing out of a fascination with floral beauty and the natural world. This aqua-floral approach represents a distinct departure from her earlier career in front of the camera, positioning Susanne Gregard instead as the person composing the image rather than the subject of it.

Susanne Gregard maintains a presence for this work online, where she shares photographs and discusses her artistic process. The shift from modeling and acting to fine art photography reflects a broader pattern seen among many former models and performers who, after stepping away from the industries that first brought them public attention, redirect their creative instincts toward more personally driven projects. For Susanne Gregard, that has meant building a second act rooted in craft and quiet observation rather than public performance.

Susanne Gregard’s Net Worth and Current Life

Some sources have estimated Susanne Gregard’s net worth in the range of two to five million dollars, though this figure is not independently verified and should be treated as an approximation rather than a confirmed financial detail. What is more clearly established is the shape of Susanne Gregard’s life today: she resides in Los Angeles with her husband, continues her work as a media artist and photographer, and maintains a low public profile relative to the level of curiosity that periodically surrounds her because of her connection to Dodi Al-Fayed.

That curiosity tends to resurface whenever public interest in Diana, Princess of Wales, and the circumstances of the 1997 crash intensifies, whether through documentaries, anniversary coverage, or dramatized retellings of the royal family’s history. Susanne Gregard herself has not appeared in any of the major dramatized productions covering this period, and her connection to that broader story remains limited strictly to her earlier marriage to Dodi, which predated his relationship with Diana by roughly a decade.

Conclusion

Susanne Gregard’s story resists easy categorization. She is not simply Dodi Al-Fayed’s first wife, though that description will likely continue to define how she is introduced in most contexts. She is also a working model and actress from the 1980s, a media artist with an ongoing creative practice, a wife of more than thirty years, and a mother of two adult sons. The brevity of her marriage to Dodi Al-Fayed belies the outsized role it has played in shaping public awareness of who Susanne Gregard is, even as the rest of her life has unfolded largely outside the spotlight, by what appears to be her own deliberate choice.

For those encountering Susanne Gregard’s name for the first time through the lens of Dodi Al-Fayed’s history, the fuller picture is one of a woman who moved through a brief, high-profile chapter with apparent grace, and who has since built a private, creatively engaged life on her own terms.

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