Jocelyn Wildenstein used to be a frequent subject of tabloid scrutiny due to her socialite status. She was often dubbed “Catwoman” because of her fondness for felines and her distinctive facial features.

Jocelyn hailed from Lausanne, Switzerland, where she spent her formative years as the daughter of a department store buyer facing financial challenges. As much as they weren’t rich, she said her childhood was incredible.

Jocelyn also learned how to swim and ski when she was aged around four or five. She explained, “We were on the lake, so in the summer I would swim, and in the winter we had the mountain very close where we could go to ski. It was a very nice life, good quality.”

The socialite’s life began changing when she went to college. She would hang out with her friends in Lausanne, Switzerland drinking coffee, tea, or juice but not alcohol. By the time she reached her twenties in 1967, she had relocated to Paris.

During this time, she was in a relationship with Sergio Gobbi, a European filmmaker, whom she had been dating for five years. After Paris, the socialite embarked on a decade-long adventure exploring Africa.

Jocelyn found that Africa was wild and a dreamland. This wasn’t her first time falling in love with the continent. She had fallen in love with it since childhood, inspired by her father’s collection of books about the continent.

Entranced by the images of its landscapes and wildlife, she made a vow to visit one day. True to her word, she embarked on the journey, fulfilling her childhood dream.

During these moments, Jocelyn wasn’t famous yet. She later became renowned for her extravagant marriage and subsequent divorce from billionaire art collector Alec Wildenstein. Her lavish lifestyle also captured public attention in 1998 when news of the pair’s divorce emerged.

At the time, Jocelyn disclosed spending over $700,000 annually on luxuries like food, wine, flowers, and medications. Following the divorce, she reportedly received one of the largest settlements in history, rumored to exceed $2.5 billion.

After her divorce, Jocelyn opened up about how she fell in love with Alec at 31, while in Kenya. The art collector had gone to inspect his family’s 66,000-acre ranch and Jocelyn, who was on safari with friends accompanied him to kill a lion at a neighbor’s ranch.

On their first day together, the pair rode their motorcycles to a hilltop and had their first kiss, which Jocelyn described as “quite intense.” The duo went on to get married in 1978 and had two kids, Diane and Alec Wildenstein Jr.

After parting ways in 1999, Alec alleged that aside from good health and a love for Africa, he and Jocelyn had nothing in common. So after the kids moved away to college their fights became constant and Jocelyn was hysterical, shocking the servants with her language and behavior.

Jocelyn denied all this, saying they only had arguments like any other couple without escalation. When the socialite’s dad died in Kenya, she flew to the country but Alec stayed behind only to come 14 days later.

The mom of two accused Alec of delaying the funeral but the art collector argued that Jocelyn was looking for an ebony coffin and perfect burial spot so that she could maintain appearances.

Everything went well with the funeral and Alec gave a nice speech, but three weeks later, he told Jocelyn that their marriage was over. It is after their divorce, that Alec, who had once called Jocelyn an exciting woman, made accusations about her excess use of plastic surgery.

The accusations that Jocelyn overindulged in plastic surgery make many people wonder how she would have looked today without the changes. Still, via AI-generated photos, one gets a glimpse into how Jocelyn would have looked today minus cosmetic surgery.

According to Alec, they had been married for a year when she told him that his eyes looked baggy. Together, they got eye-lifts and this marked the start of the socialite’s consistent use of plastic surgery.

Jocelyn would go behind Alec’s back to get her body worked on “She was crazy. I would always find out last. She was thinking that she could fix her face like a piece of furniture. Skin does not work that way. But she wouldn’t listen,” lamented Alec.