Holly Madison

Holly Madison is a television personality and author best known for starring on The Girls Next Door and her former relationship with Hugh Hefner. Madison spent much of her childhood in Alaska before moving to Oregon. She attended Portland State University before transferring to Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, where she studied theater and psychology. While in college, she worked as a waitress and began modeling to help pay tuition.

Madison gained national attention in the early 2000s as one of Hefner’s girlfriends and a resident of the Playboy Mansion. She rose to fame on E!’s The Girls Next Door, which aired from 2005 to 2009 and followed the lives of Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson. The show made her a recognizable figure in pop culture.

Following her time on The Girls Next Door, Madison starred on her own reality series Holly’s World from 2009 to 2011. She went on to headline the Las Vegas burlesque show Peepshow, replacing Kelly Monaco in the show.

In 2015, the reality TV star became a New York Times bestselling author with her memoir Down the Rabbit Hole, which she later followed up with her second bestseller, The Vegas Diaries (2016).

In 2022, she began co-hosting the Girls Next Level podcast, revisiting her time at the Playboy Mansion alongside Marquardt. She was later named the host of the true crime docuseries Lethally Blonde.

Madison married businessman Pasquale Rotella in 2013. They share two children: daughter Rainbow (born in 2013) and son Forest (born in 2016). The couple divorced in 2019. She moved on with Zak Bagans later that year, and the pair split in 2025.