Shelley Sullivan’s ex-husband lived a modest suburban life before marrying the beauty guru and living it up in mansions while enjoying world travel and luxury vehicles, a friend claims.
Sullivan, the billionaire founder of popular skincare brand MCoBeauty, and her accountant husband Anthony, split two weeks ago after an explosive argument.
The heated dispute prompted Anthony to leave for the United States, while his wife moved to the InterContinental in Double Bay. It is believed she will return to Sydney soon.
The jet-set split, coming just seven years after the couple’s opulent Point Piper wedding, has shocked Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs social circle.
Before meeting the beauty boss, Anthony, 46, a country boy from Cootamundra, led a modest life with his ex-wife and two young children in suburban Sydney.
The family lived in a three-bedroom house on Bilgola Plateau, 35 kilometers north of Sydney, which sold in February for $2.3 million.
Anthony Sullivan’s home he shared with his ex-wife and two children on Bilgola Plateau.
Shelley and Anthony Sullivan lived in an $11,000-a-week rental mansion in Bellevue Hill before they separated.
Shelley and Anthony often enjoyed luxurious trips abroad together.
“Before he met Shelley, he drove an old Mercedes and then upgraded to a high-end Range Rover,” said a source close to Sullivan.
Since their lavish wedding in 2016, Shelley’s business venture has taken them to a high-flying life, traveling first class abroad to glamorous locations such as St Tropez, the Maldives, Paris, New York and the Swiss Alps.
They were last photographed together on Shelley’s Instagram page in March at celebrity venue Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
‘He led a fairly simple life. “He married a girl from Adelaide before that marriage fell apart,” the source said.
“He went from Bilgola to Bellevue Hill and from Adelaide to Apsen.”
The former couple was last photographed together on Shelley’s Instagram page in March at celebrity venue Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
Shelley and Anthony enjoying Mykonos in Greece
Despite their multimillionaire status, Shelley and Anthony rented some of Sydney’s most enviable properties.
They previously lived in a luxurious heritage-listed home on the Vaucluse Cliffs, which sits next to Sydney’s oldest lighthouse.
‘We’ve been here for 18 months. It’s heritage-listed so we’re not allowed to do much,” Shelley told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2018.
‘I don’t have much space for shoes – I left space in the cupboards for the garden! But living here is a great experience: it is a unique property.”
Most recently, the couple lived in the $11,000-a-week heritage-listed Leura rental mansion in Bellevue Hill.
Daily Mail Australia understands the couple were looking for a house in the eastern suburbs worth $100 million before the breakdown of their marriage.
Shelley, Anthony and their children from previous marriages also lived at The Keepers Cottage, next to Macquarie Lighthouse station, on the South Head cliffs in Sydney.
The couple photographed at the millionaires’ playground in Zermatt, Switzerland
Shelley, 50, is celebrated as one of Australia’s most successful businesswomen.
She made her mark in the 1990s with her modeling and talent agency before launching her thriving ‘masstige’ beauty brand, ModelCo, in 2016.
In 2022, a large Australian conglomerate approached MCoBeauty and acquired a portion of the business.
The brand is on track to generate $247 million in fiscal 2024.
On Tuesday, Shelley’s longtime friend Kristin Fisher slammed rumors that she was the “other woman” behind the power couple’s shocking marriage breakup.
Reports have wrongly suggested that Kristin (pictured left with Shelley) was involved in the breakdown of the marriage, which she says is “unequivocally false.”
Reports have wrongly suggested that Kristin, a Double Bay business owner and mother of two, was involved in the split, which she says is “unequivocally false.”
“This is absolutely false,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
“I’m tired of being clickbait in all these stories and having to defend myself against something I have nothing, and I mean NOTHING, to do with.
“The truth is that I’ve only been with one person lately,” he added.