Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell ( born 25 December 1961) is a British socialite, known for her association with financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

She worked for her father, the publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, until his death in 1991, when she moved to the United States and became a close associate of Epstein.

Maxwell founded a non-profit group for the protection of oceans, The TerraMar Project, in 2012. The organisation announced cessation of operations on 12 July 2019, a week after the sex trafficking charges brought by New York federal prosecutors against Epstein became public.

In 2020, she was charged by the US federal government with the crimes of enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls. The US Virgin Islands Department of Justice announced on 10 July 2020 that Maxwell was also under investigation in the Caribbean territory.

Parents

• Robert Maxwell (father)
• Elisabeth Maxwell (mother)

• Christine Maxwell (sister)
• Isabel Maxwell (sister)
• Kevin Maxwell (brother)
• Ian Maxwell (brother)

Early life

Ghislaine Maxwell was born in 1961, in Maisons-Laffitte, France, the ninth and youngest child of Elisabeth (née Meynard), a French-born scholar, and Robert Maxwell, a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor.

Her father was from a Jewish family and her mother was of Huguenot descent. Maxwell was born two days before a car accident that left her 15-year-old brother Michael in a prolonged coma until his death in 1967. Her mother later reflected that the accident had an effect on the entire family, and surmised that Ghislaine had shown signs of anorexia while still a toddler. Throughout childhood, Ghislaine resided with her family in Oxford at Headington Hill Hall, a 53-room mansion, where the offices of Pergamon Press, a publishing company run by Robert Maxwell, were also located. Her mother said all her children were brought up as Anglicans. Maxwell attended Marlborough College, and Balliol College, Oxford.

Maxwell had a close relationship with her father and was widely credited with being her father's favourite. According to Tatler, Maxwell recalled that her father installed computers at Headington in 1973 and her first job was training to use a Wang and later programming code. The Times reported that he did not permit Ghislaine to bring her boyfriends home or to be seen with them publicly, after she started attending Oxford University.

Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein

Accounts differ on when Maxwell first met American financier Jeffrey Epstein.

According to Epstein's former business partner, Steven Hoffenberg, Robert Maxwell introduced his daughter to Epstein in the late 1980s. The Times reported that Maxwell met Epstein in the early 1990s at a New York party following "a difficult break-up with Count Gianfranco Cicogna Mozzoni" (1962–2012) of the CIGA Hotels clan.

Maxwell had a romantic relationship with Epstein for several years in the early 1990s and remained closely associated with him for decades. The nature of their relationship remains unclear. In a 2009 deposition, several of Epstein's household employees testified that Epstein referred to her as his "main girlfriend" who also hired, fired, and supervised his staff, starting around 1992. She has also been referred to as the "Lady of the House" by Epstein's staff and as his "aggressive assistant". In a 2003 Vanity Fair profile on Epstein, author Vicky Ward said Epstein referred to Maxwell as "my best friend". Ward also observed that Maxwell seemed "to organize much of his life".

Politico reported that Maxwell and Epstein had friendships with several prominent individuals in elite circles of politics, academia, business and law, including former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton  with wife Hillary Clinton, attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew.

Maxwell is known for her longstanding friendship with Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and for having escorted him to a "hookers and pimps" social function in New York. She introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew, and the three often socialised together. In 2000, Maxwell and Epstein attended a party thrown by Prince Andrew at the Queen's Sandringham House estate in Norfolk, England, reportedly for Maxwell's 39th birthday. In a November 2019 interview with the BBC, Prince Andrew confirmed that Maxwell and Epstein had attended an event at his invitation, but he denied that it was anything more than a "straightforward shooting weekend".

In 1995, Epstein renamed one of his companies the Ghislaine Corporation; based in Palm Beach, Florida, the company was dissolved in 1998. As a trained helicopter pilot, Maxwell also transported Epstein to his private Caribbean island.

In 2008, Epstein was convicted of soliciting a minor for prostitution and served 13 months of an 18-month jail sentence. Following Epstein's release, although Maxwell continued to attend prominent social functions, she and Epstein were no longer seen together publicly.

By late 2015, Maxwell had largely retreated from attending social functions.

Personal life

Since at least 1997, Maxwell has maintained a residence in Belgravia, London. 

In 2000, Maxwell moved into a 7,000-square-foot (650 m2) townhouse on East 65th Street, New York City, less than 10 blocks from Epstein's mansion. Maxwell's townhouse was purchased for $4.95 million by an anonymous limited liability company, with an address that matches the office of J. Epstein & Co. Representing the buyer was Darren Indyke, Epstein's longtime lawyer. 

In April 2016, the New York townhouse where she had lived was sold for $15 million.

Following her personal and professional involvement with Epstein, Maxwell was romantically linked for several years to Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway computers. She attended the wedding of Chelsea Clinton in 2010 as Waitt's guest. Maxwell helped Waitt obtain and renovate a luxury yacht, the Plan B, and used it for travel to France and Croatia before their relationship ended, in late 2010 or early 2011.

On 15 August 2019, reports surfaced that Maxwell had been living in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts, in the home of Scott Borgerson, who in October 2020, due to the publicity surrounding Maxwell, stepped down as CEO of CargoMetrics, a hedge fund investment company involved in maritime data analytics. Maxwell and Borgerson were described as having been in a romantic relationship for several years. Locals in the town of Manchester-by-the-Sea said Maxwell had kept a low profile, went by "G" instead of her full first name, and had been seen on several occasions walking a Vizsla dog along the beach.

Borgerson and Maxwell filed documents in Massachusetts Land Court about Borgerson's residence, known as Phippin House, during a civil dispute with neighbours regarding rescinded access rights to the larger Sharksmouth Estate in 2019. A neighbouring property manager attested that Maxwell and Borgerson were living together at the property in question. Others have said they had been seen repeatedly running together in the mornings.

Borgerson stated in August 2019 that Maxwell was not currently living at the home and that he did not know where she was. On 15 August, the New York Post published photographs of Maxwell dining at a fast-food restaurant in Los Angeles, claiming that "The Post found the socialite hiding in plain sight in the least likely place imaginable — a fast-food joint in Los Angeles". The photos were later proven to have been taken at a meeting with Maxwell's friend and attorney Leah Saffian, who also gave other pictures to the Daily Mail.

Maxwell moved to a remote 156-acre (63 ha) property in Bradford, New Hampshire in late 2019, where she used former British military personnel as personal security until her arrest in July 2020. At the time of her arraignment, federal prosecutors stated that Maxwell was married; she did not disclose the identity of her spouse (or their respective finances).

In December 2020 it emerged that she had married Borgerson in 2016.