Who

One half of the couple with New York's best cheekbones, exquisitely-preserved supermodel Iman is the wife of David Bowie.

Backstory

The daughter of a diplomat, Iman was born in Somalia, attended high school in Cairo, and was discovered by fashion photographer Peter Beard on a Nairobi street. (She was not discovered in the African bush, despite an urban legend that circulated widely at the time.) Iman moved to New York in the late '70s, and was in top echelon of supermodels by the time she landed on the cover of Vogue in 1982. The first black woman to sign a cosmetics contract, she's appeared in a long line of ad campaigns for the likes of Calvin Klein, Escada, Revlon, and Valentino. With her modeling career fading, in 1994 she launched an eponymous cosmetics line specifically for women of color; she followed up with another line, I-Man, as well as a makeup guide for ethnic complexions, Beauty of Color. In addition to juggling various cosmetics ventures and Africa-centric non-profit activities, these days she stars as the host of the Canadian edition of Project Runway.

Personal

Iman married her childhood sweetheart in Kenya and just weeks later moved to New York to begin her modeling career. She subsequently divorced her first husband and married basketball player Spencer Haywood. She had her first child, a daughter named Zulekha, in 1979. She married her third husband, David Bowie, in 1992. Their first child, Alexandria Zahra (she goes by "Lexi") was born in 2000. The family lives in a converted chocolate factory on Lafayette Street, the same building as Dan Ziff and tabloid queen Janice Min.

Family ties

Somali model Waris Dirie is her cousin.

True story

Iman was only an A-cup before she got herself a rack upgrade in the 1980s. She has since said that she regrets having the surgery.