Strange Details About Madonna's Daughter Lourdes Leon

Lourdes Leon, the eldest of Madonna's six children, was born on October 14, 1996 in Los Angeles, California. Growing up the child of a true pop music legend can't have been easy for Leon, and she dealt with her mother's fame by keeping her own life extremely private. "I've been judged from a young age, but I think that privacy is the reason why I was able to keep my wits about me and not find myself in a mental asylum," she shared with actor and close family friend Debi Mazar for Interview.

Now that Lourdes Leon is all grown up, she has let her guard down quite a bit, thrusting herself into the spotlight with her music and her modeling career. She has also opened up about her life, revealing details that are fascinating and sometimes quite strange. She claims to not have many famous friends, which is unusual given her mother's world domination level of celebrity. She also has a dislike for actors, despite her first boyfriend being a two-time Oscar nominee. And despite the lavish life of Madonna and her family, Leon prides herself on having paid her own college tuition (even though she hated her mom's alma mater). Read on to learn more strange details about Madonna's daughter Lourdes Leon.

Lourdes Leon, the daughter of personal trainer slash actor Carlos Leon and pop icon Madonna, was born in Los Angeles, California and raised in New York City. Upon graduating from La Guardia High School, Leon attended The University of Michigan, just like her mother had many years before. Leon reportedly paid for her own college tuition, telling Debi Mazar for Interview, "We don't get any handouts in my family." She also expressed that she'd grown up under her mother's strict supervision, and couldn't wait to be out on her own. "I needed to be completely independent from her as soon as I graduated high school,' Leon explained.

But college life was not exactly what Leon had imagined, at least not at her mom's alma mater in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "It was absolute torture," she revealed to The Cut, voicing her disdain for frat parties in particular. "So scary. Greek life is disgusting and should really be abolished." Leon was clearly from a different world and extremely unimpressed with some of her fellow students. "I couldn't get over the ignorance," she said. "I was just like, 'These b*tches are so basic I'm gonna die.'"

Leon stuck it out for a year before returning to New York to study dance at SUNY Purchase. The program was grueling, but Leon was up for the challenge. "You think that your body is not capable of something until you just have to do it," she told Vanity Fair.

Having grown up the oldest child of perhaps the most legendary pop artist of our time, Lourdes Leon was understandably nonplussed when it came to the entertainment industry. After attending her first Met Gala in 2021, Leon was thankful for the opportunity, but that didn't mean she had a good time. "I'm sure it's fun if you're someone who is friends with a lot of famous people, but I'm not," she told Interview. "I didn't know who the f*** to talk to." Leon called the experience "awkward" and explained, "You're just shoved into a room with all these famous people and you're supposed to talk to them and be their friend, even though you don't f***ing know them."

While it seems strange that Leon wouldn't have famous friends given her upbringing, it may have been her attitude toward actors that kept her from forming those friendships. "Honestly, actors really annoy me and I can't be around them," she declared to Interview, citing it as a reason why she hadn't really considered acting as a career path for herself. She even doubled down on her statement while speaking to The Cut the following year in 2022. "I still don't like actors," Leon said. "They don't know how to dress."

Given her dislike of actors, it's a little odd that Lourdes Leon's first boyfriend was Oscar-nominated actor Timothée Chalamet. Leon and Chalamet met while both were attending Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City. Leon spoke highly of Chalamet to Vanity Fair, saying, "I respect him a lot, we were a little item. My first boyfriend."

During a 2017 interview with Andy Cohen on SiriusXM, Chalamet spoke a bit about dating Leon when prompted by Cohen, recalling a night they'd all spent out dancing with Madonna in tow. "I don't usually talk about this stuff but that was a good night," Chalamet mused. 

It seemed that, at the time, the pair were still friendly, as the actor explained that Leon had yet to see his film, "Call Me by Your Name," but that she was looking forward to it. "She teases me about it," Chalamet said, speaking not about the movie but his appearances during its promotion. As for how long Leon and Chalamet were a couple, Chalamet wasn't willing to divulge that information, telling Cohen, "Next question, I'm outta here," with a good-natured laugh.

Tattoos are not inherently unusual, as many celebs are pretty inked up (including some with neck tattoos you'll want to copy), but Lourdes Leon has several tattoos that are difficult to decipher. The model and fledgling musician reportedly has about eleven tattoos as of this publication, many of which are odes to her family. She had the words "Mom" and "Dad" inked across the knuckles of each of her hands, and she has the names of two of her siblings on her left arm. The name "Mercy" is on her bicep, for her younger sister Chifundo "Mercy" James, and "David" is written on her inner arm for her little brother David Banda, who has faced many tragedies in his life. Madonna adopted both Mercy and David from Malawi in 2006 and 2009 respectively, but Leon has three other siblings as well, a brother named Rocco Ritchie, born in 2000, and twin sisters Estere and Stella, adopted in 2017 from Malawi.

Leon also sports tattoos of butterflies, a heart, and a devil, which are fairly classic, as well as the Rolls Royce logo, but she has a few more that she hasn't explained the meanings of. Beneath her left elbow is a puzzling image of a house with flames coming off the roof, and on Leon's right forearm is a tattoo of a baby's face whose only features are a curled hair and ears. It has been reported that Madonna wasn't exactly thrilled with her daughter's tattoos, although she has been inked herself.

Lourdes Leon's parents, Madonna and Carlos Leon, dated for just two years and split when she was only seven months old, but they harmoniously co-parented their daughter throughout her childhood. Leon's father emigrated to the United States from Cuba but, according to Leon, he never taught her how to speak Spanish. "...he was lazy and didn't feel like it," she said in Interview, quickly adding, "That's not to say he's not amazing, I love him so much, but he didn't feel like it."

Leon also pointed out the fact that she was studying and had become fluent in French, and her father didn't want her to have too much on her plate. But Leon claimed she was dedicated to becoming fluent in her father's native language as well, even if it meant teaching herself. "I'm really trying to learn Spanish, and I try to speak it with my boyfriend and my other friends who are fluent," she explained.

As of this publication, it's unclear as to whether Leon has achieved her goal, however. In 2023, a TikTok surfaced of Leon being interviewed by paparazzi in Barcelona, Spain, and it appeared as though she was having some trouble understanding the interviewer's questions as he spoke with a strong Spanish accent.

In November 2022, Lourdes Leon released her first EP under the name Lolahol titled "Go." When speaking to The Cut, Leon claimed she wrote her first song, "Giovanni's Room" out of boredom, then played it for her friend, Alexandra Drewchin A.K.A. Eartheater, as a joke. But Eartheater loved it, urging Leon to get in the studio, which she did. Leon dropped her first single "Lock&Key" complete with a music video she choreographed herself, an electropop track that showed of her musical talent.

But just one year earlier, Leon seemed to have no interest in following in her mom's footsteps and pursuing a path to pop stardom. "As for music, I can sing. I just don't care about it," she revealed to Interview. "Maybe it's too close to home." Even after releasing music of her own, Leon seemed to be on the fence about it. She appeared relieved to have created her songs and put them out into the world rather quickly, lest she second-guess herself. "Otherwise, I might start to think about it too much and then I might start to hate it," she told The Cut.

Lourdes Leon was not one to rest on the laurels of being a nepo baby, instead carving out her own path in the fashion world. Leon made her modeling debut at age 19, starring in Stella McCartney's Pop fragrance campaign and going on to appear in the pages of Vogue Germany and strutting the catwalk for Gypsy Sport in 2018. Leon soon became a sought-after presence for big designers, and has appeared in campaigns for Converse, Marc Jacobs, Burberry, and Calvin Klein, and graced the runway for Versace and Rihanna's Savage X Fenty Line. But it wasn't fame Leon was after, she just wanted a well-paying job. "Financially, modeling is a smart decision," she explained in Interview.

As Leon became more familiar with the fashion business, she grew irritated by its inner-workings. "Fashion is an art, and I really respect that, but I can only play the game up to a certain point," she shared with The Cut, expressing dismay at the self-congratulatory nature of the business. She learned to just go in and do as she was told after initially following her mom's advice to the contrary. "Then everyone was like, 'This b*tch is so annoying.' I think they took it as a sign of disrespect when, really, I was just trying to have a voice," Leon said.

To the world at large, Madonna's music is legendary, but to her eldest daughter it was just mom's music. At first, anyway. Over time, Lourdes Leon came to appreciate her mother's pop prowess on a deeper level, but it took some growing up to do so. "My experience with my mom's music has changed so much as I've gotten older, because I'm increasingly able to recognize how influential and amazing this woman is...," she shared in Interview.

And it wasn't just that she became a true-blue Madonna fan, but that she was able to recognize the impact her mother had when it came to female empowerment. "I didn't fully comprehend that until I realized the importance of empowerment and what it means to be a woman," Leon explained.

Leon also spoke about how her mother's wild success was not a fluke but the result of seriously hard work that often kept her up all night. While she clearly admired her mother's accomplishments, she was unsure whether she had what it took to achieve such greatness herself. "I inherited her control issues, but not her work ethic," Leon admitted.

Throughout her life, Lourdes Leon has been incredibly close with her mom's friend, actor Debi Mazar. Mazar and Madonna met before either was famous and forged a lifelong friendship that made Mazar a big part of Leon's life. She was a frequent babysitter and allowed Leon the treats forbidden by her mom, such as cookies and TV. "It was probably the happiest day of my life," Leon said in Interview in reference to the time Mazar let her watch TV at her house. "The list of things I wasn't allowed to do is never-ending."

When Leon was little, Mazar even dressed up as Snow White for one of Leon's birthday parties. According to Mazar, she tried her hardest to conceal her New York accent while in costume, but Leon still wasn't buying it. "I was pulling it off, and all of a sudden—you were like, five—you came up to me and were like, "Hmm, you sound a lot like Debi," Mazar reminded Leon during their conversation for Interview. "I was like, 'Oh, this girl's fierce.'"

There's no denying that Lourdes Leon inherited her parents' good looks, her dark eyes, tawny skin, and long brunette locks the result of her Italian and Cuban heritage. Leon's modeling career has proven that she has what it takes in the world of high fashion, but when it comes to her beauty routine, she is pretty low maintenance. "I try to work out, because it makes me feel good," Leon explained in Interview. "I don't watch what I eat, ever. I'm not there yet."

But her laid back approach to her looks has an exception: her hair. Leon considers it her best feature, and therefore puts a lot of effort into its maintenance. "I have a really intense hair-care routine," she shared. "It's the only thing I actually care about..." Leon kept mum about the exact products she has used to keep her mane looking sleek over the years, but revealed that she has used a lot of oils. "I feel like I wouldn't be pretty if I didn't have this hair, so I'm really psycho about it," the model said.

When your mother is Madonna, the glitz and glamour of fame probably loses its luster after a while. That was the case for Lourdes Leon, who took great care to guard her own privacy while growing up, but that doesn't mean she'd forgo the chance to meet certain other famous people for a dinner. In 2021, Leon revealed who her dream dinner guests would be during an interview with Vanity Fair and her answers were surprising.

For example, Leon said she'd like to sit down with Fidel Castro, mostly out of curiosity, explaining, "Anyone who's ruled a country would be interesting to talk to..." She also listed Rasputin as a dream dinner guest because she admired something specific about him. "He literally just manipulated the royals," Leon told Vanity Fair. And rounding out the somewhat unusual list was "Real Housewives of Atlanta" star NeNe Leakes, and it seemed that Leon was simply a fan. "I don't think it's horrible for women to have this show," she shared. "Even when they're screaming, I love it and it's soothing to my brain."