Marla Maples is probably best known for being Donald Trump's second wife, and the reason for his acrimonious divorce from Ivana Trump. But there's more to this southern belle than you might think.

Read on and find out what Marla Maples before, during and after she was Mrs Trump. All dollar values are in US Dollars.

Born on 27 October 1963 in Cohutta, Georgia, Marla Ann Maples was the only child of the Maples family. Marla's mother Laura Ann Locklear was a model-turned-housewife, and Marla's father Stanley Edward Maples was a real estate developer. Stanley also fancied himself as something of an entertainer, despite being head of a strict Baptist household, and was a singer/songwriter and Elvis impersonator in his spare time.

Marla was a student at the Northwest Whitfield High School in Tunnel Hill, Georgia. She was popular and athletic at school, where she excelled at basketball and was elected to be class secretary. A burgeoning beauty, she was also crowned 1980/81 homecoming queen in her senior year.

After leaving the University of Georgia in 1981 without graduating, Marla began entering beauty pageants. She won the Miss Resaca Beach Poster Girl Contest in 1983, followed by first runner-up in the Miss Georgia contest in 1984. In 1985, she went on to win the Miss Hawaiian Tropic contest.

Marla moved to New York City in 1985 with dreams of becoming an actress. 

But she soon achieved tabloid notoriety for her relationship with Donald Trump...

A versatile performer, Marla Maples played "Ziegfeld's Favorite" in the Broadway musical The Will Rogers Follies in 1992 – but her stage career stalled when it was overtaken by her personal life. She soon achieved tabloid notoriety for her relationship with Donald Trump...

One of the biggest tabloid scandals of the late 80s and early 90s involved the bitter divorce between Donald and Ivana Trump, and Marla Maples was right at the heart of it. Ivana discovered Donald's obsession with Marla, along with rumours that he'd been letting her stay in his luxurious properties.

At Christmas 1989, Donald and Ivana were staying at a ski resort in Aspen, Colorado – and it was no coincidence that Marla was staying there too. According to Ivana, she confronted Marla over lunch. The then-13-year marriage imploded, Marla was implicated, and New York gossip columns had a field day. A February 1990 issue of the New York Post even led with the headline "Best Sex I've Ever Had" – an alleged quote from Marla in reference to Donald.

A versatile performer, Marla Maples played "Ziegfeld's Favorite" in the Broadway musical The Will Rogers Follies in 1992 – but her stage career stalled when it was overtaken by her personal life. She managed to get small parts in TV and film projects from the mid-90s, by which time she was Mrs Trump.

In 1994, she appeared alongside Donald in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Something Wilder. She also made it onto Spin City, Designing Women, and The Nanny. Maples also had some luck in getting film roles and managed to find parts in movies like Executive Decision (1996), Happiness (1998) and Black and White (1999).

On 13 October 1993, following the Trumps' divorce, Marla gave birth to Donald's daughter Tiffany Ariana Trump. Donald's parents were said to be upset that he'd fathered a child out of wedlock, and so he married Marla, who was reputed to take a wedding dress with her whenever they travelled together so that she could marry him at a minute's notice.

Trump's reasons for the marriage are probably less than romantic. At the time, he was getting ready to take his casinos public in an attempt to settle some of the debts he'd accumulated. His messy private life was thought to have unnerved investors on Wall Street and marrying his girlfriend would make him a more stable prospect.

Donald married Marla Maples in December 1993, shortly after Tiffany was born. They wed in a lavish wedding ceremony at the Plaza Hotel which was attended by celebrities including OJ Simpson and Rosie O'Donnell and the guest list stretched to over 1,000.

The bride wore Carolina Herrera and a $2 million Harry Winston tiara, while the guests drank the best champagne and ate caviar. But the ceremony was described by critics as "a perfunctory, transactional affair".

The couple were in and out of the gossip columns throughout their marriage, and unsurprisingly by 1999 their union was over. Marla was banned from discussing her marriage to Donald, but it was characteristically messy, with headlines from the National Enquirer and lurid stories about trysts with Trump's bodyguard in 1996. Trump and Maples both denied the stories, but secretly he was said to be furious. He didn't want to admit that she had cheated on him, according to sources, so he waited until the following year to announce their separation.

Just before their fourth wedding anniversary, Donald and Marla announced that they were to separate. As part of the deal, both parties were asked to reveal their net worth to lawyers; Donald said he was worth $1.17 billion (£971.4m) while Marla was said to have just $100,000 (£83k) to her name. It's unlikely that Donald was in fact a billionaire in 1997, especially considering the financial problems he'd had in previous years. The reason for the discrepancy is thought to be the prenup the couple signed.

After being stung by a very expensive divorce settlement from Ivana, Donald made sure that his prenup with Marla was airtight. The agreement, according to reports, could only be broken if it was proven that Donald had at any point in proceedings hidden money or underestimated his worth. He therefore had much more incentive to overvalue his fortune.

At the time, he said that the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City was worth $1.25 billion (£1.04bn), even though it was in debt and losing money. Two other casinos that later went bankrupt were given a combined value of $1 billion (£831m). Trump’s accountants said at the time that they had "not audited or reviewed" the numbers, adding: "Assets are presented at current values estimated by Trump using various valuation methods."

Reports at the time claimed that Marla Maples was demanding an eye-watering $25 million (£20.7m) for a clean break settlement, but she should probably have read her prenup. The terms of the agreement stipulated that if they split after fewer than five years, she would only be entitled to $1 million (£831k).

She was also entitled to $1 million to buy herself a home, kept her stunning $250,000 (£207.6k) engagement ring and was awarded $100,000 (£83.1k) per year in child support for Tiffany, who was just was four years old. Typically, as it was Donald Trump, there were stipulations about Tiffany too. Although he agreed to pay for her until she was 21, he ruled that the payments would stop before then if she found a full-time job, enlisted in the military, or joined the Peace Corps.

In November 1999, Marla bought herself a home with some of the settlement. She spent a cool $1.35 million (£1.12m) on a home for herself and Tiffany in Calabasas, California, which she sold in July 2013 for $2.2 million (£1.83m). After selling her LA home, she also invested in a condo close to Central Park, New York.

Marla was left to bring up her daughter Tiffany as a single parent. She said that the move to California had been necessary to protect her daughter from the spotlight, and she added in an interview with People magazine in 2016: "Her daddy is a good provider with education and such, but as far as time, it was just me. He loves his kids. There’s no doubt. But everything was a bit of a negotiation."

After the divorce, Marla returned to her original plan. She returned to the stage in 2011 in a off-Broadway production called Love, Loss and What I Wore. She also gained exposure as a TV personality. In 2016 she was a contestant in ABC's Dancing With the Stars, managing to win 10th place in the competition with dancing partner Tony Dovolani. She also had a stint as a guest host on The View the same year. 

Marla has been indulging her mystical, New Age side in recent years. She spends her time meditating, practising yoga and living an organic lifestyle. She's hosted a show on Contact Radio, Awakenings with Marla Maples, in which she interviewed alternative healers, astrologers and New Age personalities. In 2012, she won a Hollywood Music in Media Award for the best New Age/Ambient song for a track on the album House of Love. Building on her success, she released her own album of music the following year – remarkably in collaboration with the Dalai Lama and Deepak Chopra – called The Endless.

To date, Marla has never remarried, although she was known to have dated a few men, including film producer Michael Mailer (pictured). She was also briefly involved with model and fashion designer Anand Jon.

Just before Donald Trump was elected as US president, Maples was threatening to release a tell-all memoir about their affair, relationship and marriage. The proposed memoir, It's About Time, was discouraged by Trump's people, and according to sources at the New York Post, he "declined to give his approval to the tome".

Marla had no choice but to shelve the memoir idea: she was still bound by her confidentiality agreement with Trump, which stated she couldn't publish "any diary, memoir, letter, story, photograph, interview, article, essay, account or description or depiction of any kind whatsoever, whether fictionalized or not, concerning (or seeming to concern) the details of the parties’ marriage".

In October 2016 the New York Times became aware of part of Donald Trump's 1995 tax returns, publishing some of the paperwork. The source was anonymous. Rumours about the origins of the leak swirled, and Marla was implicated because she was still married to Trump in 1995. Her signature is even on some of the files. The mystery hasn't yet been solved.

Maples has tried to lead a quieter life while supporting her favourite causes. She has been a long-term advocate of an organisation called Kids Creating Peace, which unites children from Israel and Palestine, as well as being an advisory board member to the womens' aid charity AWARENYC.org. She also supports the Louis Armstrong Center of Music and Medicine.

She also travels to developing countries and volunteers her time to charities. A keynote speaker with the London Speakers Bureau, she took part in the Summer of Peace Summit in 2018 and also spoke at the 2018 Global Summit on Science, Spirituality, and Environment in India. She's also contributed to the Paula Faris' Journeys of Faith podcast.

Although she mostly keeps her head down and avoids publicity these days, Marla once again caused controversy in 2020 by resharing an Instagram post. The conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had posted a photo of Bill Gates to his own Instagram, suggesting that Gates planned to replace cash and coins with a digitised chip that could be turned off if you refused a vaccine. Marla Maples shared Kennedy’s post, adding: "Education is key. Ask questions. Dig deeper." A CNN reporter took a screenshot of the post and shared it on Twitter, where it predictably received widespread condemnation. 

Marla had long wanted to build bridges with Ivana Trump (pictured), telling People magazine back in 2016 that she regretted the animosity between them. Ivana famously refused Marla's apology, blaming her for wrecking her marriage to Donald. Marla responded: "It makes me sad because I wish her nothing but love and I've never had any intention of hurting her."

Ivana died in July 2022 and the rift was never healed.

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