Ashley Biden is the only daughter of former Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden. The Bidens also raised Joe’s sons from his first marriage, Beau and Hunter. Joe Biden did have another daughter, who died very young.
The Biden family has been impacted greatly by tragedy. Beau died at age 46 of a brain tumor, and Joe also had a daughter who died young with his first wife, Nelia Hunter Biden, in a tragic car crash. Joe’s surviving children are Hunter Biden, 50, and Ashley Biden, 39.
The List once described her as “a social worker, activist, and entrepreneur with a passion for creating permanent change,” especially issues relating to poverty.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Ashley Biden Worked for a Delaware Nonprofit Organization That Received Federal Funding
The Washington Examiner reported that Biden was working for a Delaware nonprofit organization that received a $166,000 federal grant.
The group, the Delaware Center for Justice, received a federal Edward Byrne Memorial grant, which Joe Biden supported, the site reported.
Then 38, Ashley Biden had worked for the group for a year and was promoted to executive director, according to Examiner, which added that the grant is designed to “strengthen local law enforcement.”
In 2019, Biden announced she was leaving the group through a statement on Facebook.
“Working with DCJ has been one of the great honors of my life,” she said. “Together we have changed the landscape of justice reform, violence intervention, and victim services for the State of Delaware. I leave DCJ in capable hands, with a passionate and committed staff, a talented board and the infrastructure to continue to support DCJ’s vision. I am confident that the organization will continue to thrive and provide essential services to our community.” She didn’t explain why she was quitting, but it came as her dad was said to be considering a presidential run.
2. Ashley Biden Has Described the Difficulties of Being the Daughter of a Famous Politician
At times, Biden has candidly discussed how being the daughter of a famous politician can come with difficulties.
“Any achievement that I accomplished, many people attributed to the fact that I was his daughter,” she once lamented, according to The List.
She praised her parents, though, saying, according to The List, “I was taught by both of my parents to work hard, to be passionate about whatever I did, and I felt that I did that and kind of got to where I am today because of hard work and passion and determination.”
Biden told Glamour magazine that public service was in her DNA, saying, “The passion started at a very young age. My dad is a lifelong public servant; my mom was a public-school teacher—it’s in my DNA.”
3. Biden Worked on Animal Welfare Issues From an Early Age
Vice-President Joe Biden walks with daughter Ashley, right, as wife Jill waves to the crowd in the Inaugural Parade January 20, 2009, in Washington, D.C.
Biden told Glamour that her early calling came in animal welfare issues.
“When I was a kid, I always really loved animals, and I found out that Bonne Bell lip gloss was testing on animals, so I organized my school to start writing letters to [the company],” she told the magazine. “Then I became obsessed with the plight of dolphins getting stuck in tuna nets. My dad connected me with Congressman Barbara Boxer, who I nicknamed the ‘dolphin lady,’ and she got me onto the floor to help lobby Republican congressman for The Dolphin Protection Consumer Information Act.”
Biden told Elle that she was motivated by her parents’ professions. “I got a real sense that some people had a lot, and some had nothing at all,” Biden told Elle. “Even as a child, I had a hard time reconciling the inherent unfairness of it all.”
On LinkedIn, Biden lists experience as an education and employment liaison with the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families from 2007 to 2012; employment and education specialist at West End Neighborhood House in Wilmington, Delaware, from 2006 to 2007; and a clinical support specialist at NHS Children’s Reach Clinic in Philadelphia from 2003 to 2006.
4. Biden Started an ‘Ethical’ Clothing Line
Livelihood founder Ashley Biden speaks onstage at the GILT and Ashley Biden celebration of the launch of exclusive Livelihood Collection at Spring Place on February 7, 2017, in New York City.
According to Elle magazine, Biden started Livelihood, an “ethically produced, American-made clothing company.” The fashion line contained “supersoft organic cotton hoodies.”
Her debut collection proceeds were going to “alleviate poverty through education, training, and job placement,” Elle reported.
Elle reported that Biden graduated from Tulane University and earned a master’s in social work from the University of Pennsylvania. She also helped foster care children.
She is married to a plastic surgeon. Her 2012 wedding announcement in The New York Times said, “Ashley Blazer Biden, the daughter of Jill Jacobs Biden and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., was married Saturday evening to Dr. Howard David Krein, a son of Bunny Lipner Krein and Stanley Krein of Cherry Hill, N.J.”
From left to right, Dr. Jill Biden, former Vice President Joe Biden, Livelihood founder Ashley Biden, and Gilt & Saks OFF 5TH President Jonathan Greller in 2017.
At that time, The Times reported, “The bride, 30, is a social worker and career development and education liaison in the education office for the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Their Families. She develops programs for children in the juvenile-justice, foster-care and mental-health systems.”
The groom, according to The Times, was 45 and “an otolaryngologist and plastic surgeon at Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals in Philadelphia. He is also an assistant professor of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery and a director of the Herbert Kean Center for Facial Aesthetics there. He graduated from Rutgers University and received a medical degree from Thomas Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He also received a Ph.D. in cell and developmental biology from the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.”
5. Ashley Has Ended up in News Headlines Due to Drugs
Second lady of the United States Dr. Jill Biden, left, and Ashley Biden attend the 88th Annual Academy Awards at Hollywood & Highland Center on February 28, 2016, in Hollywood, California.
According to Washington Examiner, when she was 17, Biden was arrested for marijuana possession but charges weren’t pursued.
A decade later, a purported friend of hers tried to sell the New York Post a hidden camera video that they said showed a woman resembling Biden using cocaine, Examiner reported.
At Tulane University, she was known as a “party girl,” according to The New York Post.
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