Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton is an American socialite, businesswoman, model, and reality-TV star whose two-decade career has made her one of the figures of early-2000s American celebrity culture. She was born Paris Whitney Hilton on February 17, 1981, in New York City, into the American Hilton Hotels family — her great-grandfather Conrad Hilton founded the Hilton Hotels chain in 1919, and her father Richard Hilton was a real-estate developer. She has three younger siblings: Nicky, Barron, and Conrad Hilton Jr.

Her early modeling and party-circuit visibility through the late 1990s made her one of the most-photographed American socialites of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The 2003 Fox reality TV series The Simple Life — in which Paris and her childhood friend Nicole Richie spent a season living and working on a rural Arkansas farm — became one of the most-iconic American reality-TV shows of the early 2000s, running for five seasons across 2003–2007.

The late-2003 leak of the 1 Night in Paris sex tape — filmed in 2001 by her then-boyfriend Rick Salomon — became one of the most-iconic American celebrity-privacy violations of the early 2000s. The tape's commercial release the following year and the subsequent legal proceedings shaped the mid-2000s American celebrity-tabloid culture. Hilton's subsequent business empire built across her Paris Hilton Entertainment company — fragrance lines (her 2004 Paris Hilton perfume sold over $20 million in its first year), shoes, accessories, hotels (the Paris Hilton Beach Club Manila), and DJ touring (where she developed an second career as a high-fee international DJ across the 2010s).

Her career has had a substantial late-2010s and 2020s reputation reframing through the 2020 YouTube Originals documentary This Is Paris — which addressed her childhood experiences at the Provo Canyon School (a Utah "troubled-teen industry" boarding school), her substantial entrepreneurial achievements, and her advocacy for survivors of similar institutions. She has been continuously visible across podcasts, philanthropic work, and her continued Paris Hilton brand into her forties.

Her name Paris is from the Greek mythological figure Paris of Troy — the prince of Troy whose abduction of Helen of Sparta sparked the Trojan War. Paris has been continuously climbing in American naming since the 1990s and is used predominantly as a feminine name (with occasional masculine usage).