Meghan Markle is expanding her business portfolio. On Thursday, the wife of Prince Harry announced the launch of her new lifestyle brand, American Riviera Orchard.
The Duchess of Sussex filed for a trademark for American Riviera Orchard on Feb. 2. According to the document, the brand will sell cookbooks, tableware, drinkware and servingware at retail stores and online. The company also plans to sell food and beverages, including jams, fruit preserves, vegetable-based spreads and more.
The American Riviera Orchard announcement was made on social media. Markle shared a teaser video on the brand’s new Instagram account, which garnered more than 115,000 followers. The bucolic video, set to Nancy Wilson’s “I Wish You Love,” showed Markle around the garden, picking up flowers and cooking in the kitchen.
The Instagram account’s bio reads, “By Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex. Established 2024,” and it introduces followers to the company’s website, which features a waitlist signup.
The American Riviera Orchard’s logo includes a reference to Montecito in Santa Barbara County, Calif., where Markle and Harry live with their two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. The couple moved to the city in 2020, after quitting royal life earlier that year.
This is not Markle’s first project in the lifestyle arena. Between 2014 and 2017, Markle wrote a blog called “The Tig,” where she would shared food and travel tips. The blog was shut down after her engagement with Prince Harry.
Markle is the cofounder of Archewell Inc., an organization she created with Prince Harry in 2020 focusing on media production. The company first worked with Netflix on the “Harry & Meghan” documentary series and “The Heart of Invictus.” Archewell also produced podcasts for Spotify until June 2023.
Since leaving their royal duties, Markle also released a children’s book titled “The Bench” in 2021 and Prince Harry released his memoir, “Spare,” in 2023.
Recently, Markle attended the opening of the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin on March 8, where she joined Brooke Shields and Katie Couric on the “Breaking Barriers, Shaping Narratives: How Women Cope On and Off Screen” panel. During the event, Markle discussed the negative effect that social media can have on new mothers.