Who

A plastic surgery cautionary tale, Jocelyne Wildenstein is the feline-faced ex-wife of the late art collector/dealer Alec Wildenstein.

Backstory

Raised in a middle-class family in Switzerland, Jocelyne says she fell for Alec Wildenstein—the heir to an art fortune worth billions—at his 66,000-acre Kenyan game ranch, where they went on a dawn lion hunt after being introduced by billionaire Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi in 1977. The two married the following year in Las Vegas and Jocelyne quickly settled into a life of luxury: As Mrs. Wildenstein, she flitted between the family castle in France, a Paris apartment, and their New York townhouse on East 64th Street, which featured an indoor swimming pool, aquarium, and full-time staff of eight, not to mention five purebred greyhounds and a rare monkey.

Alas, the Wildenstein marriage crumbled in the '90s when she discovered that Alec was cheating. In one notorious incident, Jocelyne and two bodyguards walked in on Alec in bed with a 19-year-old Russian model and a "startled" Alec pulled a 9mm handgun. After falling for yet another Russian model, Yelena Zharikova, Alec finally ousted Jocelyne from their home in 1998. During the ensuing divorce proceedings, Jocelyne claimed that her husband refused to have sex with her and demanded $200 million in cash, plus $2.4 million in annual alimony, arguing that she needed to maintain a sizeable household staff since she had no idea how to even make toast or boil an egg. For his part, Alec told the judge that Jocelyne's "continuing plastic surgery and hair transplants and tattooing" had made him the victim of "public ridicule."A judge later agreed with her claim of sexual abandonment and granted her an unspecified amount as well as continued use of the couple's Kenyan ranch and French chateau; she also ruled that Jocelyne would be required to pay for any future cosmetic surgeries herself—and suggested that Jocelyne invest in a microwave.

The look

It's said Wildenstein undertook the surgery in an attempt to achieve a feline look and win back the affections of her husband since both had a love of wild animals. The exact nature and number of her procedures isn't known but one surgeon who described her as "deformed" guessed she'd had multiple browlifts, facelifts, cheek, chin and lip implants, canthopexy (lower eyelid tightening), blepharoplasty (upper and lower eyelid-bag removal), and Botox. Not surprisingly, while all the work she's had done has made her a freak in Upper East Side social circles, she's found more acceptance with campy downtown scenesters like fellow plastic surgery fanatic Amanda Lepore.

Personal

Following her divorce, Wildenstein was linked to Kenneth Godt, her former financial advisor. (After Godt declared bankruptcy in 1999, Wildenstein sent him packing and wished him "a lot of luck.") For the past couple of years, she's been seen with fashion designer Lloyd Klein, who regularly accompanies her to parties and events. She had two kids from her marriage to Alec, who died of cancer in February 2008, Alec Jr. and Diane, both of whom keep an understandably low profile.

Habitat

Wildenstein departed Alec's East 64th Street townhouse after the divorce was finalized in 1999 and moved into a townhouse on East 82nd Street. She later moved into a 51st floor apartment in the Trump World Tower and sold the townhouse for $14 million. After a dispute with the condo's board, she decamped to a 3,000-square-foot apartment at the newly redeveloped Plaza. She paid $10 million for the apartment in 2007.

No joke

Wildenstein once admitted that she kept her pet monkey in a Plexiglas cage installed above her gold-plated bathtub.