Duchess Meghan’s niece Ashleigh Hale was the subject of a controversial moment in Volume I of the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan that has since garnered her widespread media attention.
In the third episode, the duchess shares how the Firm allegedly forbade her niece from attending her 2018 royal wedding to Prince Harry. Hale also makes a cameo in the doc, in which she describes her close relationship with Meghan prior to her marrying into the royal family.
Ahead, see a breakdown of who Hale is, her family ties to Meghan, and the known details surrounding where she and Meghan stand now.
What does Ashleigh do?
Hale is currently an immigration lawyer and associate at Fragomen in San Francisco, per her LinkedIn.
She graduated with a J.D. from the Charleston School of Law in 2010 and obtained a Master of Laws from the George Washington University Law School the following year. She attended Hollins University for her undergrad from 2003 to 2007.
How are Ashleigh and Meghan related?
Hale is the daughter of Meghan's paternal half-sister, Samantha Markle, who shares the same father as the duchess.
In the docuseries, Hale opens up about her upbringing. "It was agreed by everyone, by myself and my brother, to be raised by our grandparents," she explains. "So they got custody of us when I was probably around two years old. And ultimately, they did adopt us. So I was raised by my paternal grandparents—for me, they were my parents."
According to the docuseries, Meghan and Hale reconnected and grew close around 2007—when Hale and her mother also reconnected—during which they often traveled together. "She takes on a lot of roles for me," Hale says of the Duchess of Sussex. "There's a sister element, there's something maternal. She's a best friend. She's kind of all the things."
"She was like a little sister," Meghan affirms.
Why wasn't Ashleigh invited to the royal wedding?
According to Meghan, the palace discouraged Hale's invite because of the duchess's strained relationship with Hale's mother, who was also not invited. At the time, Samantha Markle had been publicly speaking about Meghan in a negative light to the press.
"After the news first broke [of Meghan and Harry's relationship], Samantha pretty quickly began expressing a lot of angry words about Meg towards me," Hale recalls in the third episode. "What was communicated to me was maybe some resentment. It felt like no matter what I said, her perspective didn't change and seemed to get angrier and bigger, and we stopped talking. You know, some people you just can't reason with."
Despite Meghan and Hale's close relationship, Meghan alleges that she was advised to not send an invitation to Hale for her and Harry's wedding.
"How do we explain that this half-sister isn't invited to the wedding, but that the half-sister's daughter is?" Meghan explains, of the palace's thinking.
"The guidance at the time was to not have [Hale] come to our wedding," she continues. "I was in the car with [Harry]. I had her on speakerphone, and we talked her through what guidance we were given and why this assessment was made ... and that's painful."
Where does their relationship stand now?
Though Meghan does not currently have a relationship with Hale's mother, she is still on positive terms with Hale, who has herself not been on speaking terms with her mother.
Meghan also says that she wanted to shield Hale from the media attention caused by her mother, who infamously tipped off tabloids with false claims on the duchess. "Ash was put through quite a bit by the media just by association," Meghan says. "I didn't want her life to be plagued with all that drama."
