The former first lady Melania Trump is defined by her biographers as an intelligent and “tough” woman, in addition to being clear about her long-term relationship with the former president Donald trump, although not necessarily sentimental.
PEOPLE spoke with four of her biographers over the course of a year: Kate Bennett, Kate Andersen Brower, Nina Burleigh and Jordan. Their views, drawn from hundreds of interviews and years of research, corroborate but sometimes contradict each other — a tension in trying to completely understand any single person, let alone a president’s wife.
“I think a lot of people thought she just wanted to be rich,” says Mary Jordan, author of The Art of Her Deal and a Washington Post correspondent. “And she wanted not just to be rich — I heard that several times from key people: ‘You don’t understand, she wanted to be known.’ “
She was “very, very quiet, unaffected, sort of more aloof and more aligned with the president and the narrative”, Bennett said.
“For a first lady, who for the past four years really didn’t have a problem speaking out if her opinion was different from that of her husband, who was very vocal saying, ‘I don’t always agree with him, and I tell him so‘”, says Bennett.
Following their White House departure in January, Melania Trump has focused on enjoying the spa at her husband’s private club Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, raising her only child, Barron Trump, and spending time with her parents, PEOPLE reported, citing unnamed sources.