Monica Lewinsky

Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American activist. She became internationally known in the late 1990s after U.S. president Bill Clinton admitted to having had an affair with her during her days as a White House intern between 1995 and 1997. The affair and its repercussions (which included Clinton's impeachment) became known as the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal.

Following the scandal, Lewinsky designed a line of handbags under her name, served as an advertising spokesperson for a diet plan, and worked as a television personality. She obtained a master's degree in psychology from the London School of Economics in 2006. In 2014, Lewinsky began speaking out as an activist against cyberbullying.

Early life

Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in an affluent family in Los Angeles, California. She lived in Brentwood, and later Beverly Hills. Her father is Bernard Lewinsky, an oncologist, who is the son of German Jews who emigrated from Germany in the 1920s, first moving to El Salvador and then finally to the United States when he was 14. Her mother, born Marcia Kay Vilensky, is an author who uses the name Marcia Lewis. In 1996, she wrote a "gossip biography", The Private Lives of the Three Tenors. Lewinsky’s maternal grandfather, Samuel M. Vilensky, was a Lithuanian Jew, and her maternal grandmother, Bronia Poleshuk, was born in the British Concession of Tianjin, China, to a Russian Jewish family. Lewinsky’s parents divorced in 1988 and each has remarried.

The family attended Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and Lewinsky attended Sinai Akiba Academy, the school affiliated with the Temple. For her primary education, she attended the John Thomas Dye School in Bel-Air. Lewinsky attended Beverly Hills High School for three years before transferring to Bel Air Prep (later known as Pacific Hills School), graduating in 1991.