As the favourite daughter of the notorious press baron Robert Maxwell, she moved to New York to rebuild her life after his mysterious death and the financial scandal he left behind.
But Manhattan socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, 53, has found herself at the centre of a controversy over another powerful man, the US multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, and facing allegations of having procured an underage girl who claims she was forced to have “sexual relations” with the Duke of York.
Maxwell, whose father drowned off his luxury yacht, is alleged to have acted as “madame” for Epstein, supplying a string of underage girls for the American billionaire and his friends.
Maxwell “strongly denies” the allegations which, said a spokesman, are old, defamatory and untrue.
Legal documents lodged in a Florida court allege that the woman identified in the complaint only as Jane Doe#3 – but who has been named as US-born Virginia Roberts – was approached in 1999 by Maxwell, “one of the main women whom Epstein used to procure under-aged girls for sexual activities and a primary co-conspirator in his sexual abuse and sex trafficking scheme”.
One of the documents alleges it became known to the US government “that Maxwell herself regularly participated in Epstein’s sexual exploitation of minors, including Jane Doe #3”.
It describes Maxwell as persuading Roberts, said to be then aged 15 and who was allegedly used as a “sex slave” for the next three years, to go to Epstein’s mansion “in a fashion very similar to the manner in which Epstein and his other co-conspirators coerced dozens of other children”.
When the girl began giving Epstein a “massage”, it is alleged in the document, “Epstein and Maxwell turned it into a sexual encounter, as they had done with many other victims”.
Epstein then, with the assistance of Maxwell, “converted her into what is commonly referred to as a ‘sex slave’”, the document alleges.
It adds that Maxwell took numerous “sexually explicit pictures of underage girls involved in sexual activities, including Jane Doe #3”, which she shared with Epstein.
It is alleged that on three occasions during this three-year period she “was forced to have sexual relations with this Prince[Andrew] when she was a minor” and that “Maxwell facilitated Prince Andrew’s acts of sexual abuse by acting as a ‘madame’ for Epstein”.
Maxwell’s association with Andrew has been well documented in the press. When, more than a decade ago, the prince was reported to have accompanied her to a “hookers and pimps” themed party in New York, it threw a spotlight on their friendship.
It was one of a series of trips that led to questions being asked about the prince’s suitability for the role of trade ambassador for the UK.
Once a key member of London’s young and rich set, Maxwell left the UK after her Czech-born businessman father, a former Labour MP, fell overboard from his £15m yacht off the Canary Islands in 1991.
The 68-year-old’s body was found floating in the Atlantic and an inquest returned a verdict of accidental drowning, though media speculation ranged from suicide to murder.
His death exposed a huge financial black hole in Mirror Group Newspapers, which he controlled, and the fact he had raided the pension fund to support the company’s share price. In the fallout, two of his sons, Kevin and Ian, stood trial for their part in the fraud but were acquitted.
The media tycoon had named his yacht Lady Ghislaine after his adored daughter who is the youngest of his nine children, two of whom died at a young age.
She attended Marlborough College before going to Balliol, Oxford.
When her father bought Oxford United football club, he made her a director. When he purchased the ailing Daily News in New York, he sent her ahead to pave his way into Manhattan society.
His death is said to have left her “catatonic” with grief, and it was during this period she set out for New York to rebuild her life.
Being photographed boarding Concorde to cross the Atlantic attracted the anger of Mirror pensioners.
Once in the US, she swiftly carved out a place in the salons of Manhattan, her social cachet enhanced by her friendship with Andrew, and it was on the party circuit that she met Epstein. According to reports, she was briefly in a relationship with the billionaire and the two remained close after the relationship cooled.
Well connected, charming and intelligent, she was described by a Vanity Fair writer as “always the most interesting, the most vivacious, the most unusual person in any room”. She is said to be passionate about her environmental charity, the TerraMar Project, and is an accomplished scuba diver and pilot.
Andrew was reported to have gone on holiday with her and Epstein in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2000 and both were photographed on a shoot at Sandringham as guests of the prince in the same year.
A spokesman for Maxwell, who is not a party to the proceedings, said that the allegations were old, had been “fully responded to” in the past and were untrue. Each time the story was retold “it changes with new salacious details”, said the spokesman.
“Ghislaine Maxwell’s original response to the lies and defamatory claims remains the same. Maxwell strongly denies allegations of an unsavoury nature, which have appeared in the British press and elsewhere, and reserves her right to seek redress at the repetition of such old defamatory claims.”