Inside Melody Hobson’s life: George Lucas’ wife, businesswoman, and museum co-founder
You know George Lucas, but his wife Mellody Hobson remains an enigma—so who is she, and what exactly does she do?
On September 19 in Los Angeles, George Lucas and Mellody Hobson opened the doors of the long-awaited Lucas Museum of Narrative Art with a glitzy, opening-night gala. The celebration capped years of planning and construction and put Hobson—Lucas’s partner in life and in this project—squarely in the spotlight alongside the Star Wars creator.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens to the public on September 22.
The museum has been nearly two decades in the making. At one point, Hobson considered pulling the plug, but Lucas pushed to keep the vision alive—a snapshot of how the pair operates as a unit, with Hobson’s business acumen and Lucas’s creative stubbornness meeting in the middle.
Meet Mellody Hobson
Raised by a single mother in Chicago and the youngest of six, Mellody Hobson was the first in her family to attend college. She went to Princeton, and in October 2020 the university announced it would build Hobson College—the first residential college at Princeton named for a Black woman.
In business, Hobson’s résumé runs deep:
- Co-CEO and president — Ariel Investments
- Board member — JPMorgan Chase & Co.
- Board member — Sundance Institute
- Former board roles — Starbucks Corporation, The Estée Lauder Companies
- Former chairperson — DreamWorks Animation
- Financial contributor — Good Morning America and CBS News
Her influence has been recognized well beyond Wall Street: Hobson was ranked No. 94 on Forbes’ Most Powerful Women in the World list.
How Lucas and Hobson met
Hobson and Lucas first crossed paths at a business conference in Aspen, Colorado, in 2006 and began dating that year. They announced their engagement in January 2013.
The couple married on June 22, 2013, at Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in Marin County, California. Journalist Bill Moyers officiated the ceremony, and former U.S. Senator Bill Bradley walked Hobson down the aisle. It was Hobson’s first marriage and Lucas’s second.
The museum they just unveiled in Los Angeles—an effort Hobson once weighed shelving and Lucas refused to abandon—now turns from private gala to public institution, the culmination of a plan almost twenty years in the making.