Asma al-Assad, now 43, was born in 1975 in Acton, London, to a British- Syrian cardiologist father and a diplomat mother.
She attended a British Church of England school, where friends knew her as Emma, and went on to study French and computing at King’s College, London, before becoming an investment banker in New York.
Asma met future Syrian president Bashar al-Assad while he was training to as an ophthalmologist in London.
In 2000, at the age of 25, Asma married Bashar in secret just months after he became president after the death of his father Hafez.
The two have been married for 18 years and have three children, Hafez, Zein and Karim.
Many in the country hoped that a western-educated doctor and his British wife would be seen as the modern side of the Assad dynasty.
But in 2010, peaceful protests erupted across Syria after 15 schoolboys were detained and tortured for writing graffiti on a school wall in support of the Arab Spring. One of the boys, 13, was killed after being brutally tortured.
And early in the conflict there were questions asked as to how much Asma knew about her husband’s activities.
In 2012, the wives of the British and German ambassadors to the UN pleaded in a video asking her to: ‘stop the bloodshed, stop it right now’ and that she ‘could not hide behind her husband’.
In 2012, Asma came under severe criticism after a stash of emails emerged revealing her shopping habits and exploits at Harrods while war raged in Syria.
The emails showed her desperate search for a Harry Potter DVD, her concern over getting hold of a new chocolate fondue set, and her interest in crystal-encrusted designer shoes costing nearly £4,000.
She was compared by some to Marie Antoinette after the emails emerged, shopping while thousands died at home.
In one message, sent on June 17, 2011, she wrote about a £2,650 vase she wanted.
In an email to the family’s London ‘fixer’, Soulieman Marouf, she wrote: ‘Pls can Abdulla see if this is available at Harrods to order — they have a sale.’
Despite fewer TV appearances, the president and first lady maintain a presence on social media and often posts photos of visits to wounded soldiers and children cancer patients.