Annette Sharp: Richard White’s wife Zena Nasser’s fascinating background
It may be her husband’s alleged love affairs that have hit the headlines of late, but tech billionaire Richard White’s wife has her own intriguing history, writes Annette Sharp.
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Turns out neither of the two women who claim a billionaire tech boss traded sex for investment and mentoring services is the most intriguing woman in his surprisingly fruity life.
Mother-of-three Linda Rogan, the Double Bay laser clinic owner who, according to court documents, allegedly entered into an affair with Richard White in 2022 in exchange for his investment in her beauty business, is virtually an open book, or so suggests her sizzling Instagram account.
Though the one-time Real Housewives Of Sydney contender is yet to address media about her dispute with White, Rogan’s court testimony regarding her bankruptcy battle this month pulled back the covers on the life of the formerly little-known beautician.
Motivated by Rogan’s tale, last week 38-year-old Sydney psychologist Jenna Riches came forward with her allegations about the 69-year-old billionaire who, she told The Australian, she met and had sex with after reaching out to in December 2023 via networking app LinkedIn.
Riches gave a raw account of contacting White seeking career advice and, finding him receptive, slipping between the sheets with him in February believing the pair had begun a relationship. By July she knew it was over when a third woman, who claimed to be White’s wife, messaged the incredulous Riches “to apologise … because we don’t want to hurt you”.
It is that woman, who to date has taken a back seat – although she features in both Rogan and Riches’ recorded experiences after allegedly introducing the beautician to White and messaging both women – that strikes those of us watching from the sidelines as the most interesting character in these parallel tales of alleged seduction.
That woman is 43-year-old Zena Nasser, the former criminal lawyer who recently became the tech boss’s wife.
White and Nasser married in July, the same month they welcomed a new baby via a US surrogate.
Sources last week informed this column the child is a daughter named Jasmine, who they celebrated at a baby shower at their Palm Beach weekender last weekend.
Those two life-altering events, marriage and baby, occurred just weeks before White took legal action against Rogan, his alleged ex-girlfriend, in August, to bankrupt her.
That was the event that thrust White’s alleged clandestine affairs expeditiously into the spotlight, along with the man most of us had long ago dismissed as a computer nerd whose most interesting likely sidelines were papering the walls of his garage with 1970s band setlists and collecting Dr Who swap cards.
The court action seemed an out of character move for a man who this year told one media organisation he’d “spent time making sure, as much as possible, I’m not taking risks”.
According to sources close to Nasser, she, too, has an origin story that involves hooking up with White via LinkedIn.
The lawyer met the WiseTech Global boss, they say, after reaching out to him via the networking app during a Covid-19 lockdown.
It seems the rich lister, whose wealth has been put at $13 billion (though has plunged by $2 billion since his attempts to bankrupt Rogan were made public two weeks ago according to finance papers), was receptive to Nasser’s approach.
Back in year one of the pandemic, 2020, Nasser was midway through a remarkable personal transformation that was Kardashian in scope.
Gone were the boxy jackets, the understated makeup, the silver bangles and sensible court shoes she favoured as a young criminal lawyer striding the corridors at the Downing Centre and Supreme Court on behalf of high-profile criminal lawyer Brett Galloway and clients such as Kings Cross identity John Ibrahim, his brothers Michael and Sam Ibrahim, and members of the bikie gang Notorious.
In their place were fitted high-ended tailored dresses and heels, expensive baubles and an ultra-coiffured cushion-lipped almond-eyed glamazon.
Sources claim that it was after meeting White that Nasser doubled-down on her transformation.
Today she is almost unrecognisable from her former self, as pictures show.
The physical likeness to Rogan and Riches, however, is hard to ignore.
We’d suggest the 69-year-old one-time guitar repairer for The Angels and AC/DC has a thing for Swedish bombshell types.
How very Rod Stewart of him.
Having deleted her social media accounts, including LinkedIn, last year, it takes a little digging to track Nasser’s career since she traded criminal law for corporate law in the years after being banned from entering any NSW prison for a period, having been accused of conducting an improper relationship with a prisoner.
After a stint working as an in-house lawyer for Harry Triguboff’s Meriton around 2016, she moved to Ernst & Young as Oceania Law Real Estate leader before, in September 2019, being appointed general counsel at Boyuan Holdings Ltd (BHL).
BHL is a Chinese property developer (the first to list on the ASX state reports) that, in 2017, was in the running to buy the Northern Gateway development site, a vast 344ha site adjoining Sydney’s second airport at Badgerys Creek Creek, from Ron and Roy Medich.
The site ended up being sold to another company with Chinese links, Roberts Jones Funds Management, that sale reported in March 2021.
That was the same month Nasser signed off from Boyuan, after which the scent of her career trail goes cold, possibly because she had by then caught the eye of White via LinkedIn.
We hear the newlyweds are currently living between three homes.
White still prefers to base himself at his Bexley compound mid-week, while Nasser prefers to bunk down at an inner-city apartment.
Weekends are enjoyed at the Palm Beach mansion he bought in June 2022 for $27.5 million.
Nasser’s teenage daughter, born of a previous relationship, meanwhile, is said to be away at boarding school in Switzerland, installed in the exclusive Institut Le Rosey (alma mater of King Juan Carlos of Spain, King Fuad II of Egypt and King Albert II of Belgium) in the Swiss Alps.
Fees at the school, for the 13 to 18-year-old age group, are reportedly about $200k a year, an outlay that gives a student access to Europe’s most noble families — something we suspect her mother would have relished.
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