Billionaire Catwoman’s Revenge: The Jocelyne Wildenstein Story

In the late 1990s, Jocelyne Wildenstein, the wife of French billionaire art dealer Alec Wildenstein, became a media sensation. Their divorce, fueled by Alec’s infidelity and a shocking incident involving a gun, captivated the public.

It all started with a fax. Jocelyne was staying at their home in Kenya when she received a fax from Alec telling her, “It is impossible for me to let you come in at #11,” referencing their New York apartment.

She showed up anyway.

When Jocelyne walked into their residence, Alec pulled a gun on her. He says he put it away when he realized it was her, but she called the police. As Alec was led away in handcuffs, he vowed to ruin her life. “I will see you are out on the streets!” he told her.

But, that’s not how things turned out at all. Jocelyne was awarded a staggering $2.5 billion divorce settlement and $100 million in annual alimony.

This story was sensational enough with the billions of dollars and the confrontation that led to Alec’s arrest, but Jocelyne’s appearance also became a subject of fascination in the press. She appeared to have had quite a number of procedures that made her look “catlike.” Her ex-husband and a friend supported the claims that she was frequently under the knife.

“I would always find out last. She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture. Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen,” Alec told Vanity Fair in 1998.

According to him, she began undergoing plastic surgery procedures shortly after marrying Alec in 1978, starting with his and hers eye lifts.

In 2023, Jocelyne told PAPER magazine that her “catlike” appearance was a result of her Swiss heritage, and claimed that her ex-husband (who died in 2008) had exaggerated her procedures to the press during their bitter divorce.

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“Refinement is how man separate himself from the beasts. And Alec has forgotten that. He has forgotten his manners,” Jocelyne said in a New York Magazine interview from 1997.

How did Jocelyn and Alec meet?

Jocelyne Périsset met Alec Wildenstein at 5 a.m. on a lion hunt at his family’s Kenya ranch “Ol Jogi” in 1977. She was the guest of her best friend, a woman named Claude Bauche.

Because they met on the hunt, they were not allowed to talk at all.

That night, Jocelyne and Alec rode motorcycles to the top of a mountain on the property, where they shared their first kiss.

At the time, Jocelyne was living in Paris with her boyfriend, filmmaker Sergio Gobbi, but her mind was stuck on Alec.

He was living in New York at the time, and she had no way to contact him. He found her, though.

One day she showed up to a hair appointment to find the entire establishment covered in orchids.

Soon after that, Alec didn’t so much as propose to Jocelyne as demand that she be his wife.