Andre Balazs

André Balazs built a hospitality empire with his boutique chain the Standard, the Mercer in SoHo and Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood, California. The son of Hungarian immigrants, he dated the actress Uma Thurman for years and also dated the television host Chelsea Handler. He turned the sleepy Chateau Marmont into a hangout for members of the hip Hollywood set, like Johnny Depp and the singer Florence Welch. He has bragged of employing Ivanka Trump as an intern one year when she was a student. Mr. Balazs stepped down as chairman of the Standard chain’s board in March 2017 to focus, he said then, on his luxury properties. Mr. Balazs was married to Katie Ford, the daughter of Eileen and Gerard Ford who started Ford Models, and with whom Mr. Balazs has two children. (In July he had a son with Cosima Vesey, a London socialite.)