Meghan Markle has been friends with Victoria Jackson for years and the incredible make-up entrepreneur has reportedly been letting the Sussexes stay in her luxury homes for free – leading to an award moment recently
12:57, 22 Nov 2025Updated 13:05, 22 Nov 2025
Meghan has reportedly been using a friend’s private jet(Image: Netflix)
A wealthy cosmetics mogul has been generously allowing Meghan Markle and Prince Harry to stay at her lavish properties for free – which reportedly make their own residence “look like a prison”.
Cosmetics tycoon Victoria Jackson and her husband Bill Guthy, helped to launch make-up brands by Cindy Crawford and Jennifer Lopez, are neighbours of Harry and Meghan and Victoria is said to be helping out the couple by lending them her private jet for travel, as well as access to their homes.
Meghan has described Victoria as her “safe harbour,” a term that now carries greater weight given Meghan’s ties with the entrepreneur.
Victoria is an incredible businesswoman, known as the Queen of Cosmetics, with homes across America, which the couple have stayed at.
It was allegedly Victoria’s incredible New York house where Meghan was ‘announced’ to one other person in her Harpers Bazaar interview – an awkward moment that went left people in stitches on social media.
In the chat, which saw her pose make-up free on the cover, the Duchess of Sussex spoke candidly about her life in Montecito, reflecting on everything from parenthood and marriage to making “mistakes” in the public eye. However, writer Kaitlyn Greenidge picked up on a gesture straight out of palace traditions during her second meeting with Meghan at the house.
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Victoria has quite a few impressive homes dotted around the globe(Image: Getty Images North America)
Painting the scene, Kaitlyn described how Meghan, 44, was formally announced as Meghan, Duchess of Sussex ahead of their meeting – even though they were the only two people in the building.
In her piece for Harper’s Bazaar, Kaitlyn wrote: “When I enter, the house manager announces, ‘Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’, even though we appear to be the only other two people in the house.”
It was reportedly also the house the pair stayed in when they were chased by paparazzi.
“They have been staying there for years, they always stay at Jackson’s houses,” a source told the Mail.
Meghan celebrated her 41st birthday at Victoria’s ranch close to Santa Barbara, California, and reportedly feels “at home” at the businesswoman’s estates.
The couple also regularly use Jackson’s sprawling 14-bedroom Beverly Hills residence, which was originally constructed for silent cinema icon Buster Keaton, as their accommodation, sources claim. Featuring a 50ft lounge, 60ft swimming pool, accommodation for staff and an olive tree-lined entrance, it’s vastly different from the Sussexes’ Montecito property.
An insider revealed: “Victoria’s houses make their place in Montecito look like a prison or a beach shack. It suits them for security, the houses are unbelievable, and they don’t have to pay at all, which is also appealing.”
The Duchess of Sussex opened up about her marriage and home life during the interview(Image: Malick Bodian/Harper’s Bazaar)
Meghan was ‘announced’ to an empty house during the interview(Image: Malick Bodian/Harper’s Bazaar)
After growing up with a mother who was “too young to have a child” and an alcoholic stepfather, Victoria has previously told how she survived a sexual assault where she was stabbed in her own bedroom by serial rapist who was later convicted of multiple crimes.
Speaking to People Magazine, she said: “I never went back in my room again. I could have let that be a defining moment where I never got off the floor again. Or I could go,’‘Okay, that is really horrible and I’m going to do the work to help me get to the other side. It’s always going to be there, but how can I move through it?’”
After leaving school without a high school diploma, she started mixing “concoctions” in her garage, which led to a scholarship in 1976. Within a decade, she created her own foundation and founded Victoria Jackson Cosmetics., which focused on bare-faced makeup.
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She sold $1million of cosmetics in the first week of working at QVC, before eventually generating a billion dollars in sales.
Victoria previously appeared on Meghan’s podcast Archetypes, where she discussed revealed the trauma of her daughter Ali being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease known as neuromyelitis optica. It prompted her and husband Bill to start Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation to champion basic scientific research to find new treatments and ultimately a cure for NMO.
Doctors warned her Ali would only live four years – but she is now 31.
Victoria said: “It’s sort of like every parent’s worst nightmare all of a sudden. You have a child who hasn’t even been sick, you know? One day we’re out and about, and she starts telling me she has an eyeball headache and she’s starting to lose some vision. And I just think she has an eye infection and, you know, ‘we’ll go to the eye doctor tomorrow. Here take a Tylenol. You’ll be okay.’
Meghan and Victoria have struck up a close friendship(Image: BACKGRID)
“And that kind of very long horrible week from finding out that it wasn’t an eye infection, but an optic neuritis – which was an inflammation of her optic nerve – and going to see the neurologist and finding out after a blood test, for what would be a rare disease that she ultimately has. And they tell me that she has four years to live.”
The lack of research into the disease prompted Victoria and her husband, Bill Guthy, to start Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation to champion basic scientific research to find new treatments and ultimately a cure for NMO.
Victoria said: “Immediately in that moment, my life changed and I went, as I say, from mascara to medicine, and I got myself to the Mayo Clinic and I met the only doctor at the time who was doing any research, which they said, was this very rare disease.”
“So anyway, he was doing some research and I said: ‘Hey, you don’t know me, but I’ve a lot of cosmetics and hey, I make lip gloss’. I can cure this.”
Since then, new research has led to three approved treatments for the disease, with the couple contributing more than $80million of to the charity.