Kendra Wilkinson is a California-born reality star, model and businesswoman with a net worth of $6 million. The public knows her best from her many reality television series, including The Girls Next Door and Kendra. She became famous when she decided to move into Hugh Hefner’s mansion as one of three girlfriends in the early 2000s, alongside reality television stars Bridget Marquardt and Holly Madison.
Kendra Leigh Baskett was born on June 12, 1985 in San Diego. She’s the daughter of Patti Wilkinson, a former Philadelphia Eagles cheerleader, and Eric Wilkinson, an entrepreneur and biochemist from Pennsylvania. Kendra is one of two children. She has a younger brother by the name of Colin. Her parents married two years before Wilkinson was born and divorced 11 years later, when she was only 8-years-old. She lived primarily with her mother in a middle class neighborhood in San Diego.
As a child she was a tomboy, playing softball in San Diego and graduating high school in 2003 before making the decision to skip out on college and become a model. It was less than a year before her life took a drastic turn. After being hired for Hugh Hefner’s 78th birthday, Wilkinson met Hef and moved into the Mansion shortly after along with her two dogs. She lived in the Mansion as one of Hef’s girlfriends for 5 years until she moved out to get married.
During her five years in the mansion, E! created a reality television program called the Girls Next Door. Cameras followed Wilkinson, Marquardt and Madison as they lived and played in the mansion. The show was an instant success and the girls became household names. For several years, the girls’ popularity increased and Wilkinson was offered several roles in movies and television. Her television career while she was filming Girls included roles on the hit television show Entourage and Las Vegas. She had cameos in major music videos including Akon’s “Smack That,” in which she was the girl Eminem dumped water on to. She was also in the “Rockstar” music video for Nickelback alongside her Girls’ costars. Wilkinson and her Girls’ costars also appeared in Scary Movie 4 in 2006 as well as Celebrity Rap Superstar in 2007.
In 2005, Wilkinson became a regular blogger for the Philadelphia Eagles, where her mother once cheered and her future husband once played.
In 2008, rumors surfaced that the reality star was exiting the mansion, which she did. It wasn’t long before rumors started that she and Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Hank Baskett were seeing one another. In September of the same year, it was speculated that the two were engaged. They both denied the rumors and put them to rest two months later after Baskett proposed to Wilkinson in Seattle atop the Space Needle in November. The two wed on June 27, 2009 only two weeks after the engaged couple announced that they were expecting their first child together later in the year. It was speculated that Hugh Hefner would walk the bride down the aisle, but it was her brother who actually did. The couple signed on to do a reality show by the name of Kendra in which E! cameras followed the couple as they got engaged, married and had their baby.
The newly pregnant couple soon made the move to Indianapolis, where Baskett was playing football at the time. Their first child was born in December 2009; a little boy who shares his father’s name. Wilkinson granted interviews after her son was born, admitting she suffered from postpartum depression in large part because of the changes in her body as well as feeling isolated in Indianapolis while her husband was playing ball.
Wilkinson’s career has been mostly a result of her relationship with Hugh Hefner and her reality television series. She hasn’t won any awards for her roles, but her show, Kendra, was the highest-rated reality shows on E! since 2002. Other aspects of her career included writing and publishing a book in 2010, “Sliding Into Home,” and partnering with famed dancer Louis Van Amstel in the 12th season of Dancing with the Stars. Her own E! True Hollywood Story debuted in 2010 and she said goodbye to E! in 2011. In 2012, the reality star was given a new reality show by the name of Kendra on Top on WE tv. Since then, she starred in an episode of Celebrity Wife Swap and given birth to a second child, a daughter, on May 16, 2014.
(Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
