‘Catwoman’ Jocelyn Wildenstein dead at 84: Former billionaire was famed for extreme plastic surgery

Jocelyn Wildenstein has died at the age of 84.

The socialite, nicknamed Catwoman because she reportedly had many facial cosmetic procedures in the hopes of resembling a cat, passed away on Tuesday in Paris from a pulmonary embolism.

The star, born Jocelyne Périsset, was in a Parisian palace at the time of her death, it was reported by Paris Match.

‘Her partner Lloyd Klein is saddened to announce the death of Jocelyn Wildenstein in Paris,’ it was shared by AFP. 

She was last seen looking healthy on December 18 in Paris when with Klein.

The star smiled at onlookers while in a fur jacket, leggings and boots as she wore black sunglasses and her blonde hair in soft waves over her shoulders. 

She was nicknamed Catwoman due to her pronounced cat eyes and leonine features. 

She had over 1 million Instagram followers and described herself as an ‘art dealer.’

This Swiss-born socialite came from humble origins, only to tie the knot in the 1970s with a French-born American billionaire.

But the two courted headlines just over two decades later with their messy divorce.

She became one of the wealthiest people on the planet after her divorce settlement, which left her with more than $2 billion, plus millions more annually.

But she somehow managed to lose it all after years of tinkering with her face and spending on countless luxuries.

The high society fixture was married to the late art dealer and billionaire Alec N. Wildenstein, who was the son of the French art dealer and horse breeder Daniel Wildenstein. 

Their family presided over Wildenstein & Co., an influential Paris-based art dealership.

While speaking to The Times of London, Jocelyn described how she became fascinated by Africa and its fauna after finding a box of picture books about the continent when she was a child. 

Later, she developed an interest in hunting and wildlife, which led her to the Wildenstein family ranch Ol Jogi, located in Kenya.

There, she was introduced on a safari to Alec by Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi arms dealer.

Jocelyn recalled how Alec decided to kill a lion that had been killing nearby antelope, so she accompanied him on a pre-dawn mission.

She recounted how, after her future husband took down the lion with one shot – plus a second for good measure -they ate part of the animal as a kind of trophy and rubbed its blood on their necks.

‘You must eat a part of the heart of your game,’ she said. ‘It’s legend. Maybe to take the power of the lion.’ 

She recently shared a flashback photo.

‘My early years at Ol Jogi building this beautiful ranch from scratch before having my children, This was my first love story with Africa and it started here at #oljogi,’ she captioned the stunning photo.

Although she didn’t date the photo, it appeared to have been taken in the late ’70s or early ’80s, early on in her relationship with Wildenstein

But by the ’90s, Jocelyn was completely unrecognizable after her face was transformed reportedly from numerous cosmetic surgeries. 

They left her with slanted cat eyes, a prominent chin and exaggerated cheek bones, which some have compared to a lion’s face. 

Despite the obvious change in her appearance, Wildenstein at one time bizarrely claimed to have never had plastic surgery.

Alec did comment on her face. He told Vanity Fair, ‘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.’

Wildenstein fired back that he ‘hired a publicist and paid a plastic surgeon to certify that I completely changed my face’ to win the divorce, she stated.

More recently she owned up to having some procedures, though she downplayed its impact.

In the wake of years of reported over-the-top spending and seemingly unending cosmetic procedures, Alec filed for divorce in 1999, though Jocelyn has said she was the one to first decide to end the marriage due to her husband’s infidelities.

Although he filed for divorce in Switzerland, where Jocelyn was less likely to get a significant divorce settlement, she ended up receiving what should have been a windfall — a reported $2.5 billion.

On top of that, she was to be paid $100 million per year for 13 years by her ex-husband, and later his estate following his death in 2008 at 67.

However, her ex-husband’s family cut off the payments in 2015.

Despite obtaining more wealth than most people could ever imagine, Wildenstein managed to fritter it away through extravagant purchases on clothing, jewels, art and even tens of thousands of dollars in annual phone bills.

In 2018, she claimed to Page Six that the vast majority of her wealth disappeared because one of the paintings that was part of the trust set up for her in the divorce settlement, attributed to Diego Velázquez, turned out to be a forgery, while a Cézanne that was expected to go for around $35 on auction only sold for $4.7 million 

Following her divorce, Wildenstein began dating the fashion designer Lloyd Klein in 2003.

The two later got engaged, but they have had a bump relationship over the years. 

In 2016, Wildenstein was arrested for slashing Klein’s face with scissors during a fight at her Trump Tower apartment.

Klein was subsequently arrested days later for robbery and assault after he allegedly tried to retrieve some of his belongings from Wildenstein’s apartment.

But the couple later reunited.