Holly Madison is a 37-year-old model, showgirl, TV personality, and best-selling author. She’s also widely remembered as one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends on the hit E! reality series The Girls Next Door. Hugh Hefner passed away on Wednesday, and Holly is the only ex-girlfriend from that show who hasn’t mentioned his passing.
By February 2002, Madison became Hugh Hefner’s #1 girlfriend. But by October 2008, the couple broke up, after Hef refused to get married for a third time (although he did eventually get married to Playboy Playmate Crystal Harris in 2012).
“Holly wanted very much to get married and have children and that wasn’t in the cards for us,” Hefner explained in a video for Playboy at the time. “I made a noble effort on the children’s part of it. I was not prepared at this point to marry again.”
Madison released her first memoir in 2015. The book, Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny, debuted in the #1 spot of the New York Times Best Seller’s List and remained there for three weeks. In May 2016, she released her second memoir, The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice and the Road to Reinvention, which also appeared on the New York Time’s Best Seller’s List.
She has two children: one daughter named Rainbow Aurora Rotella (born March 5, 2013), and one son named Forest Leonardo Antonio Rotella (born August 7, 2016).