Mackenzie Scott’s heartbreaking confession has gone viral: ‘I built Jeff Bezos’ billion-dollar empire, raised his kids, and now he’s marrying Lauren Sanchez in a $150 million spectacle?’ Fans are outraged when she snaps and confesses: ‘I don’t recognise him anymore’ – has money and fame destroyed the real Bezos?
Mackenzie Scott was married to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos for 25 years before their divorce in 2019.
Scott and Bezos married in 1993 after a tumultuous affair. Together they had four children, whom they still try to keep out of the spotlight.
Since her divorce, the philanthropist, who is one of the richest women in the world, has hit the headlines thanks to her huge donations to hundreds of charities and has handed over a total of $19 billion.
‘My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful,’ she wrote in an email as she joined the Giving Pledge, a list of billionaires who have pledged to donate half their wealth in 2019. “It will take time, effort and care. But I will not wait. And I will do it until the safe deposit box is empty.”
After announcing his separation in 2019, Scott was briefly married to chemistry teacher Dan Jewett from 2021 to 2022. Bezos, meanwhile, has been engaged to former news anchor Lauren Sanchez since 2023, with their wedding set to take place in June 2025.
So who is Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife? Here’s everything you need to know about Mackenzie Scott and her relationship with the Amazon founder.
She’s from San Francisco
Scott grew up in an affluent neighbourhood in San Francisco. According to the New York Times, her father worked as a financial consultant and her mother stayed home to raise Scott and her two brothers.
When she was 17, her father’s firm declared bankruptcy and she took an extra job so she could graduate a year early from Hotchkiss Boarding School in Connecticut. Scott later worked as a waitress to pay her way through Princeton University, where she studied creative writing under the late Toni Morrison.
Scott is a writer
Scott has published two books in her career. Her debut novel, The Trial of Luther Albright, took ten years to write and was published in 2005. The second book, Traps, was published in 2013.
In the afterword to the first novel, Scott said she realised she wanted to be a writer when she was six years old. Before her death in 2019, Toni Morrison called Scott ‘an extraordinary writer, almost a complete writer.’
She was married to Bezos for 25 years
After college, Scott moved to New York City to pursue her dream of writing a novel, but found it difficult to write while working as a waitress. So when she was invited to an interview at a financial firm, she accepted, not knowing that her future husband would be conducting it.
Bezos hired Scott – largely on Morrison’s recommendation, according to The New York Times – and the two soon began a torrid affair. The couple dated for three months before getting engaged and married in 1993.
However, in 2019, they announced they were divorcing after 25 years of marriage.
Scott helped him launch Amazon
Shortly after their wedding, Bezos told Scott that he wanted to quit his job and start his own digital book company. She supported him, and they moved to Seattle to pursue his dream.
‘I’m not a businessman, but when he talks about this idea, I can hear the passion and the excitement,’ Scott said in a 2013 interview with Charlie Rose about Bezos’ original plan. ‘And for me, you know, watching your spouse, someone you love, go on an adventure – what could be better than that and being a part of that.’
Bezos eventually founded Amazon in the garage of their Washington, D.C., home in 1994.
She has four children with Bezos
Scott and Bezos had four children in their marriage. The parents keep many details of their children’s lives secret, including their names and birth years.
However, in 2013, Scott told Vogue that she put her writing on hold after the birth of their third child. She said: “I knew I couldn’t be the kind of parent I wanted to be and keep writing. Those years were just too busy.”
In announcing their divorce in 2019, Bezos and Scott made it clear that co-parenting was a top priority. The Amazon billionaire wrote on X’s website, ‘While the labels may be different, we remain family and cherished friends’.
Scott pledged to donate half of her fortune before her death
After the terms of her divorce from Bezos became public, Scott announced in May 2019 that she had agreed to give away at least half of her fortune during her lifetime, Forbes reported. As part of her mission, Scott is using a ‘no strings attached’ philosophy, which means she is handing over control of how the money she donates will be spent to a non-profit organisation.
According to Yield Giving, a website she created to detail her donations, Scott has given more than $19 billion to more than 2,000 nonprofits. In a 2021 blog, she wrote that she never liked the word ‘philanthropy’ because it is often associated with ‘financially wealthy people who think they know best how to solve other people’s problems.’
‘Just because how much or little money changes hands does not make it philanthropy,’ Scott wrote. ‘Philanthropy becomes intention and effort.’
She remarried in 2021
Dan Jewett and Mackenzie Scott.Dan Jewett/FaceBook; Michael Kovac/Getty
Two years after her divorce from Bezos, Scott married Jewett, a chemistry teacher at the school where her children attend. When he later joined her in the Giving Pledge programme and pledged to donate half of his fortune during his lifetime, he called Scott ‘one of the most generous and kind people’ he knew.
Scott and Jewett were married for just over a year before the philanthropist filed for divorce in September 2022. The divorce was finalised four months later.
