- Serena Williams is set to step away from tennis after this year's US Open, she announced on earlier this month.
- She'll leave as one of the greatest athletes of all time, with 23 Grand Slam wins and nearly $100 million in on-court earnings.
- Williams has a daughter with husband and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, and they hope to expand their family soon.
She was born in Saginaw, Michigan, but her family soon relocated to the Compton area of Los Angeles.
Their father was formerly a Louisiana sharecropper and wanted his daughters to have a better life than he did. So he began training Serena and Venus in tennis at a very young age, based on information he'd gathered from videos and books.
Although Serena and Venus were doing well, Richard relocated his family to Florida so that his girls could get better instruction and rise to the professional level.
She drew attention for her powerful playing style and fierce athleticism. Soon, she graduated from high school and signed a $13 million deal with Puma. In 2000, she and Venus won gold medals in the doubles event at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia.
In 2003, she became one of six women to earn a career Grand Slam in the open era when she won the Australian Open, again defeating Venus in the final. Holding all four grand slam titles at once, it was dubbed the "Serena Slam."
She went on to repeat the feat in 2015.
She had knee surgery in 2003 and underwent several procedures in 2011 due to a blood clot in her lung. Many wondered if she would retire.
They met in 2015 amid rumors that Serena was dating rapper Drake. Williams shared the news of their engagement with a poem on Reddit:
"I came home / A little late / Someone had a bag packed for me / And a carriage awaited / Destination: Rome / To escort me to my very own "charming" / Back to where our stars first collided / And now it was full circle / At the same table we first met by chance / This time he made it not by chance / But by choice / Down on one knee / He said 4 words / And / r/isaidyes"
She told Vanity Fair that she had taken a pregnancy test before the tournament at the behest of a friend. She couldn't believe the result.
"Oh my God, this can't be — I've got to play a tournament," she recalled thinking. "How am I going to play the Australian Open? I had planned on winning Wimbledon this year."
She went on to win in straight sets — again beating Venus.
Williams later revealed that she had a blood clot scare after her daughter's birth, and that hospital staff didn't heed her warnings when she identified the problem.
"I told you, I need a CT scan and a heparin drip," she remembers telling the medical team, according to Vogue. "I was like, listen to Dr. Williams!"
She was right — a scan found a series of small blood clots in her lungs. Doctors quickly administered the treatment she had asked for initially.
Wedding guests included Beyoncé, Eva Longoria, and Kim Kardashian.
She's been spending most of her time at her $2.5 million Palm Beach Gardens home with her husband and daughter. She owns a second Palm Beach Gardens home with Venus.
She sold her Bel Air mansion for $8.1 million in 2019, Architectural Digest reported, and was trying to sell her Beverly Hills villa in 2021.
"My designs are inspired by all women. I want women to know that it's okay to love and embrace who you are … to be unapologetically bold and beautiful in anything you're wearing," she writes on her personal website. "Through HSN, my Signature Statement collection is about empowering fans everywhere to connect with this message."
The organization has built schools in Kenya and Jamaica to provide education to underprivileged youth.
The five-part series looked at this particular moment in Williams' professional and personal lives, including her pregnancy and marriage.
Forbes ranked her at No. 90 on it list of America's Self-Made Women.
Williams has said that investing in start-ups has become a passion of hers.
"I really fell in love with early stage, whether it's pre-seed funding, where you're investing in just an idea, or seed, where the idea has already been turned into a product," she wrote in Vogue. "I wrote one of the very first checks for MasterClass. It's one of 16 unicorns—companies valued at more than $1 billion—that Serena Ventures has funded, along with Tonal, Impossible Foods, Noom, and Esusu, to name a few."
Williams was one of just two women to finish on Forbes' list of the top 100 earning athletes in 2021, joining fellow tennis player Naomi Osaka.
Williams said that while she did not like the word "retirement," she was ready for the next stage of her life.
"I love playing, though. It's amazing, but I can't do this for ever," she said. "Sometimes you just want to try your best and enjoy the moments and do the best that you can."
If she manages to win the US Open, she would tie Margaret Smith Court's record for most singles Grand Slam victories — male or female — in the history of the sport.