Ashy Bines: Gold Coast fitness influencer’s life, love and business empire
She’s an entrepreneur, personal trainer, wife and mother. Gold Coast-based fitness queen Ashy Bines is still learning how to balance her success amid a fair share of controversies a decade on.
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She was one of the pioneers of fitness influencers and managed to rise to success — and stay there — for more than a decade.
But Queenslander Ashy Bines’ personal and professional life has not always been smooth sailing, with the mother of two facing some controversies regarding her business and personal backlash throughout her very public career.
Here’s what you need to know about Ashy Bines — who describes herself as an “entrepreneur, personal trainer, speaker, wife, mother and activewear designer”.
Personal life
Born on December 2 in 1988, Bines was raised by her mother. She has admitted in the past she doesn’t know her real father and did not get on well with her stepfather.
When she was 19 years old, she met her future husband Steven Evans, then aged 28, who introduced her to the world of fitness.
He reached out to her on Facebook and from there they began chatting online before starting a relationship.
“I was 19 and so lost in my life. My parents were going through a nasty divorce, I was in and out of retail jobs and I was trying to find out who I was,” Bines told the Courier-Mail in 2020.
“Steve was my knight in shining armour and helped show me what I was capable of.
“Steve was a personal trainer for about 10 years before I came into his life. I joined in one of his boot camps for the physical activity and fell in love with it.”
They married in 2014 and together they built a fitness empire and had two children together — son Taj, who was born in 2015, and daughter Tala, who was born in 2022.
Their family and business is based on the Gold Coast.
“I’m so proud of Ashy and everything she’s achieved. There are so many sides to her. There’s the boss babe, the mum, amazing wife and the loyal friend,” Evans said in the same 2020 interview.
“She’s also my rock. We are great support for each other. We’ve built a thick skin and things don’t really affect us like they used to.”
Career
Bines and Evans — a personal trainer for many years before they met — formed a fitness business together and have worked on it ever since.
Bines is the co-founder and creative director of the Ashy Bines Group which rose in popularity when they launched the online Ashy Bines Bikini Body Challenge around 2011, and then later the Ashy Bines Squad app.
She set up the subscription-based challenge to include recipes, workout plans, videos and chat forums.
Bines later branched out to create an activewear collection called Baseline, which launched in 2020 after a previous fashion collaboration, and had huge success during the pandemic.
She opened the Ashy Bines Transformation Centre gym in the Gold Coast but after six years decided to close it down in 2020. She said the decision was not based on financial reasons but because she was “not passionate about running a gym”.
Before the closure, the Mermaid Beach gym had downsized, some classes were cut and membership prices were slashed.
Bines is also an author, releasing her book 15 Lessons That Changed My Life in 2020, and her own self-titled magazine.
She has also been in paid partnerships with health and fitness companies over the years.
In January 2020, Bines sold her Broadbeach Waters property for $2.2 million, which she bought in 2013 for $1.955 million.
Controversies
Bines’ success has also come with its fair share of controversies, with the fitness guru
facing allegations of plagiarism, overcharging customers, as well as blocking and deleting negative comments.
Back in 2015, it was revealed large sections of her clean eating recipes were taken from other websites, and in a YouTube video Bines claimed her books had been outsourced to a nutritionist and that she had been “too naive in not checking the origins of these recipes”.
In 2018, customers also accused Bines’ company of ripping them off and for censorship of complaints.
The complaints ranged from women who claimed they were ripped off by paying for fitness programs they were later denied access to and others who said their criticisms or feedback posted online was censored by staff.
Others said they encountered significant delays or problems when trying to return items from the company’s clothing line.
A Bines spokesman at the time said that “if there has been any wrongdoing or mistakes, we will own up to that”, however, they were “highly confident in our customer service and support teams ability”.
“Out of the hundreds of thousands of happy and long term customers, sometimes the loudest are a very small percentage that may not be happy with the service or those that have not read the Terms and Conditions when signing up/purchasing,” the representative said at the time.
“If there has been any wrongdoing or mistakes, we will own up to that. In saying that, we are highly confident in our customer service and support teams ability. They are passionate individuals whose end goal aligns with ours, all wanting to make a difference by helping girls to lead and live a healthier and happier life.”
In 2017, Bines caused massive public backlash after she was caught out on her YouTube video parking her Range Rover in a disabled parking spot outside her gym in Mermaid Beach.
She initially tried to justify her actions in a Snapchat video, where she admitted to sometimes parking there, saying: “When no one’s used that car park for three years and we have no members with any disabilities, then I do use that car park sometimes.”
This caused further backlash and led to Bines going on a self-imposed social media blackout after copping bullying and threats online.
“I’ve woken up to comments from people saying they hope the headline news is that I’ve been hit by a bus or that my head’s been smashed in by a golf club,” she said on Snapchat.
In 2022, she came under fire again from haters after leaving her three-month-old daughter and son Taj with her husband for 48 hours to go interstate with friends.
“I think it’s wrong for other women to think it’s wrong and send such a message, and also why would I have children with someone I didn’t trust?,” she responded.
“Wrong to leave my kids with their dad?
“I LOVE my baby but I also LOVE my friends, I LOVE my baby but also love travel and variety, I LOVE my baby but also love doing fun things just for me. I LOVE my baby and fully trust and love Steve for his bonding time with the kids and can enjoy myself knowing they are happy and safe.”
Social media
Bines has her own website, YouTube channel and spruiks her personal and professional life to her 3.4 million Facebook followers, a further 1 million on Instagram, 442K Snapchat subscribers and just over 82K TikTok followers.
Bines has revealed she has been the subject of online trolls and online criticism over the years. In 2020 she said she was finding it hard to keep up with her Instagram fans, as well as deal with trolls and bullies, and took a break from the platform because she found it “draining” and as it affected “my own mental health”.
In 2021 when she announced she was pregnant with her second child on Instagram, she revealed she was called “stupid, silly, dramatic” for holding her belly in photos because of the small size of her bump.
“It’s 2021 I thought mum shaming was a thing of the past, something I experienced when I was pregnant 7 years ago with Taj but nope,” Ashy wrote at the time.
“Already having mum hate come at me because of the size of my belly? Like there is a ‘right’ or ‘normal’ size to be?”
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