Prince Harry inherited his famous red hair from the Spencer side of his family, and it seems his children have the red hair gene too.
However, she recently revealed that her three-year-old daughter, Princess Lilibet, has also been “blessed” with her mother’s long, thick hair.
“It won’t be long until Lili can sit in hers,” he added at last month’s WellChild Awards in London, as reported in Hello! magazine. He noted that the Duchess of Sussex also passed her thick hair on to her five-year-old son, Prince Archie.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s daughter, Princess Lilibet, pictured in 2022
The Duke of Sussex pictured at the WellChild Awards in London earlier this year.
The young Prince on his first day at Kensington Nursery in 1987. His hair is neatly combed to one side.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Sussex has come a long way with his own hair.
On his first day of kindergarten in 1987, he was photographed waving at the cameras while clutching his school bag, with his strawberry blonde hair combed out of his eyes, but his appearance changed drastically after he moved to Eton in 1998.
In his memoir, Spare, the Prince remembers the time his school friends shaved his hair. Harry wrote: ‘Someone suggested my hair was a complete mess. Like grass on the moors… Someone went to get the lawnmower. Someone pushed me into a chair. How quickly, how joyfully, after a lifetime of healthy growth, it all slipped out of my head.
When he looked at his new ornament in the mirror, Harry “screamed in horror” and ran to his brother Prince William’s room, only to be met with bewildered laughter.
Harry added that his hair had not “fully recovered” from shaving when he ventured abroad on his gap year in 2003, and grew back with some strands shooting out while others stayed flat.
The Duchess of Sussex holding her four-month-old son Archie in September 2019 in Cape Town.
Harry, aged ten, with his hair parted on the side in 1995.
The young Prince in 2002 attending a charity event at a polo ground in Tidworth, Wiltshire.
Prince Harry photographed on his last day at Eton when he was 18 in June 2003.
The Prince, with short hair, pictured working as a development assistant with the Rugby Football Union at a primary school in 2004.
During his trip to Australia, Harry visited Taronga Zoo in Sydney and was photographed holding a pretty spiny echidna, also known as a spiny anteater, named Spike.
The Daily Mail reported that Harry had winced after being poked by the creature and said: ‘Ouch. He’s quite a fighter.’
His spikes closely resembled Harry’s hairstyle at the time, and he soon earned the nickname ‘Spike’, as revealed in his memoirs.
Even his bodyguards used this as Harry’s code name, and some wore t-shirts that said ‘Spike 2003’.
Even his private social media account seemed to have references to this nickname.
Around the time Meghan met Harry, she followed ‘a mysterious-looking Instagram account called @SpikeyMau5,’ Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand wrote in Finding Freedom. He also apparently had a Facebook account under the name Spike Wells.
Harry’s other cheerful nicknames included ‘Ginger, used by his late mother Princess Diana, and ‘Big Ginger’, as his ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy referred to him.
Daily Mail coverage of Prince Harry holding Spike, the spiny echidna, at Taronga Zoo in 2003.
Portrait by artist Nicky Philipps of Harry and William chatting before a Trooping the Color ceremony, which was unveiled in 2010.
Harry, with disheveled hair, attending a MapAction charity reception in London in 2007.
The Prince pictured at RAF Shawbury where he received helicopter training with his brother William in 2009.
In 2010, Nicky Philipps unveiled a new portrait of Princes Harry and William chatting before a Trooping the Color ceremony.
However, Harry later admitted he was not impressed with the way the artist, who was paid £11,000 for the commission by the National Portrait Gallery, captured his hair.
He said: “I’m a little more redheaded there than in real life.”
Referring to Prince William, Harry added: “They gave him more hair, so other than that it could have been worse.”
Prince Harry told The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last year that the red hair gene runs strong in his family.
He said: ‘The Spencer gene is very, very strong. In fact, I really thought at the beginning of my relationship (with Meghan) that if this went all the way and we had children, there was no way the ginger gene would resist my wife’s genes, but I was wrong!’
Princess Diana’s sisters, Lady Jane Fellowes and Lady Sarah McCorquodale, have red hair, as does her brother Earl Spencer.
The Duke of Sussex sporting a beard at last year’s Invictus Games
Princess Diana with her two children sat at the piano at Kensington Palace in 1985.
Prince Harry appears to have passed this gene on to his children as well. In 2020, the late Queen Elizabeth ‘noticed that her great-grandson Archie has Prince Harry’s red hair’ during a birthday video call, according to The times. Photos of Princess Lilibet as a child also show her with Harry’s hair color.
In 2019, Prince Harry even teamed up with a girl for her red hair at the WellChild Awards. Harry and Meghan were filmed meeting 11-year-old Milly Sutherland and her mother Angela.
The Prince and Milly shared a sweet moment when they both said ‘Snap’ while touching their hair. Harry then asked, “Can I borrow some?”, referring to his thinning hair.
