Before Jeff Bezos married his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott and even met his now fiancee Lauren Sánchez, he was in a relationship with Ursula Werner, his high school sweetheart.
Jeff Bezos (real name: Jeffrey Preston Bezos) is a serial businessman best known as the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, the world’s largest e-commerce and cloud computing company.
Currently, he is the world’s third richest man worth an estimated $139 billion, and made his fortune from being an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, and investor.
He has often made headlines for his love life. First is when he and his wife of over twenty years, MacKenzie Scott, divorced in 2019, and he’s now engaged to news anchor Lauren Sánchez. Jeff and his girlfriend went public with their relationship in 2019 after Bezos announced his divorce from his wife of 25 years, MacKenzie. The pair eventually got engaged in May 2023.
Now his high school ex-girlfriend has in an interview revealed what it feels like to date the billionaire, and opened up on their space fascination to a romantic birthday gesture.
Here’s everything we know about Jeff Bezos’ high school sweetheart, Ursula Werner.
Who is Ursula Werner, Jeff Bezos’ ex-girlfriend?
Ursula “Uschi” Werner is a writer and attorney based in Washington, DC.
Born in Germany and raised in South Florida, she has practiced law while continuing her creative writing.
Ursula is an attorney at The Potomac Law Group. Previously she worked as an Attorney Advisor at the Office of Legal Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice.
She holds a JD from Yale Law School, where she was an editor of The Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, an MLitt in English Language and Literature from the University of Oxford, and a Bachelors in English Literature from Duke University.
She has published two books of poetry, In the Silence of the Woodruff (2006) and Rapunzel Revisited (2010), and one novel, The Good at Heart (2017). Her second novel, Magda, is forthcoming in Spring 2025, per her website.
In a close-up interview with Rhodes Project, Ursula, who has battled two debilitating diseases including clinical depression and alcoholism, for years has stated that coming into contact with other people who suffer from the same diseases, many of whom have far more difficult life situations yet are able to face those obstacles with grace and dignity and acceptance, inspires her the most.
She is most famous for her past relationship with one of the world’s billionaires, Jeff Bezos.
Ursula Werner reportedly dated the Amazon founder as a teenager between 1981 and 1984.
Ursula and her “first love” Bezos attended Palmetto High School in Miami, where they first met.
Werner was an overachiever—valedictorian of the Miami Palmetto Senior High School class a year ahead of Bezos, winner of a full scholarship to Duke University, and a Rhodes Scholar.
Bezos and Werner from their few pictures online were super close and even worked on educational film courses they devised for kids, at High School.
Ursula Werner believed that Bezos founded Amazon so that eventually he could make enough money to build a spaceship and go to space, according to Robert Spector’s Amazon.com: Get Big Fast.
Indeed, Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup, with the Latin phrase Gradatim Ferociter (step by step fiercely) as its motto, was founded by Bezos in 2000 without much noise. On 13 November 2006, the company grabbed public attention when Goddard, a test spacecraft, was launched 285 feet in the sky from Texas and landed safely. In 2015, the company became the first to accomplish a vertical landing of its New Shepard vehicle and did it again in 2017. Bezos believes that Blue Origin is his “most important work” and not Amazon. (source)
Are Jeff Bezos and Ursula Werner friends? The pair have remained in contact ever since. The author recently spoke glowingly to The U.S. Sun about the Amazon boss. High School sweetheart knows family trumps all but can’t believe Bezos’ mom allowed him to fly to space with his brother.
Ursula Werner has revealed that family ties played a crucial role in Jeff Bezos’ decision to move back to Florida.
Jeff Bezos, who has been based in Seattle for the past 30 years, plans to move to Miami where he now owns two multi-million mansions in an exclusive area of the city where his parents live.
The Sun reports that he has snapped up a sumptuous, $79 million mansion next door at a $68 million property he already owned, in an area of Miami dubbed ‘Billionaire’s Row’, where he will be neighbors with a host of fellow entrepreneurs and business leaders.
South Florida is fast becoming a prominent tech and finance hub in the United States and is understandable why he’s moving to settle there away from being close to his family.
Speaking about the Amazon founder’s recent move from Seattle to Florida, Ursula noted “spending time with his parents, who are based in south Florida, is a priceless commodity for Bezos”.
Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico but moved to Florida as a kid, attending Miami Palmetto High School and also attending a science training scheme at the University of Florida.
Werner saw firsthand just how important his mother and step-father – he has, according to reports, never met his biological dad – are in his life.
“They have a very tight family,” said Ursula who has kept in contact with her former flame, paying a keen interest in his colorful, burgeoning business life.
“That’s why he has decided to move back to Florida, I’m sure.”
Ursula recalls Bezos’ mother Jackie’s tight bond with her youngest son and admits her shock at allowing him and his brother Mark to make a maiden voyage on his Blue Origin space rocket back in 2021.
“I’m actually really amazed that his mother let him and his brother go up together in the rocket,” said Ursula who stressed she would always fly separately when travelling with her husband.
“From what I remember of her, she’s a very loving mother, and probably continues to devote herself to her family.”
What was Jeff Bezos like in his teenage years? His first girlfriend, Ursula Werner has more on the Amazon billionaire
Jeef Bezos’ high school lover Ursula has revealed a fascinating insight into the teenage Bezos, a space fanatic who was already thinking way outside of the box.
Per the author and attorney, even in his teenage years, the Amazon founder was already displaying the kind of vision and drive that has helped make him worth $137 billion.
Werner, who has remained awed by Bezos’s commitment has said “Jeff always wanted to make a lot of money.” “It wasn’t about money itself. It was about what he was going to do with the money, about changing the future,” she added.
“He was very gregarious,” Ursula told The U.S. Sun. ” We spent so much time together, listening to music and making plans for the future.
“I was thinking about cozy cottages on the beach, he was thinking about huge homes with huge entertainment centers.”
Ursula, who recently wrote an emotive blog post about her relationship with Bezos which also documented her own, private struggles, will never forget their time together.
She fondly wrote about his love of Star Trek and how he “imagined mankind living on a space station someday.”
“I don’t know where he got his fascination with space, but it was there from the time I knew him,” said Ursula.
“I’ve said in the past that the reason he’s earning all this money is that he wants to get us to outer space, he sees that as part of mankind’s future.”
She remembers Jeff as a “wicked, smart” guy who loved to “laugh”.
He was also a true romantic who once surprised his girl on her birthday with a unique surprise which, although Ursula squirmed with embarrassment, was a lovely touch.
Bezos had over 100 flyers printed with his girlfriend’s name at the top and below were two columns: Assets and Liabilities.
The assets were packed full of adjectives “only someone blindly in love would have included.”
The liabilities section, meanwhile, was empty.
“Mortified doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt as I ran around campus trying to tear them all down, ” wrote Ursula.
Who is Ursula Werner’s husband and does she have any children?
Ursula Werner has been married for decades to her husband whose name is not made public yet.
She has children whom she shares with her spouse. However, details about her kids; their names, ages, and gender are unknown.
The author and attorney currently living in Washington, DC, with her family.
Speaking about her family in her celebrity profile with Rhodes Project, she notes:
“I am looking forward to grandchildren. I love being a mother; it is psychically and physically painful for me every time a child of mine leaves the house to go to university. I am looking forward to the point in my life where children will come back and live with me, at least occasionally. I plan to knock out the window in one of the bedrooms on the front of my house, put in some French double doors, and create a little bridge over to the giant tree in the garden. Then I’ll have someone come in and build an enormous tree house where all grandchildren can have sleepovers. I will be right out there with them.”
What is Ursula Werner’s net worth?
As a good friend of Jeff Bezos, who is one of the richest men in the world, the German-Washington DC-based writer has accumulated a more than impressive fortune.
Ursula Werner has an estimated current net worth of between $3 million and $6 million. She accrued her money from her profession as an author and a lawyer.