Ashley Biden, daughter of former president Joe Biden, has filed for divorce from her husband of 13 years.
The 44-year-old former first daughter filed the documents in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, per The Philadelphia Inquirer. Ashley married Dr. Howard Krein, a plastic surgeon, 13 years ago on June 2, 2012, while President Biden was serving as vice president under Barack Obama.
She and Krein lived in Philadelphia and had no children.
The outlet also noted that Ashley posted a photo of herself to her Instagram stories walking through a park while giving a thumbs up with the Beyoncé song “Freedom” playing in the background.
She also reportedly posted the quote, “New life, new beginnings means new boundaries. New ways of being that won’t look or sound like they did before,” to the social media site with Lauryn Hill’s “Freedom Time” playing as the featured song.
Ashley and Krein began dating in the summer of 2010 after meeting through Beau Biden, one of her older half-brothers who died from brain cancer in 2015.
Ashley and Krein were married at St. Joseph on the Brandywine Roman Catholic Church, in Greenville, Delaware, and hosted a reception for 200 people at her family’s home.
As the activist and social worker recounted at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, “I had my wedding reception in my parents’ backyard. At the time, my dad was vice president, but he was also that dad who literally set up the entire reception. He was riding around in his John Deere 4-wheeler, fixing the place settings, arranging the plants, and by the way, he was very emotional.”
Besides speaking at the DNC, Ashley has remained mostly out of the spotlight during her father’s public career – but she did go viral in 2020 after pages from her private journal were published in the run-up to the presidential election.
Pages from the first daughter’s diary, including one talking about being “hyper-sexualized” at a young age and “showers w/ my dad (probably not appropriate),” were published by a website called National File.
At the time, Ashley claimed that she was targeted because her father had been running for president, and the publicity the diary had drawn led her to be “constantly re-traumatized by it.”
She also said: “Repeatedly, I hear others grossly misinterpret my once-private writings and lob false accusations that defame my character and those of the people I love.”
This was far from the only drama in the Biden family. Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau, became romantically involved with Hunter Biden and said she was “ashamed” to have become addicted to crack in 2018 after Hunter introduced her to it.
“I found it [crack] and Googled it because I didn’t know what it was,” Hallie said during Hunter’s gun trial in 2024. “He told me what it was, crack cocaine.”
“It was a terrible experience I went through and I’m embarrassed and I’m ashamed,” Hallie said. “I regret that time of my life.”
