The beautiful daughters of Brooke Shields

We all know Brooke Shields as the American actress and model who started her career at a very young age. She became famous as a teen actress with 'The Blue Lagoon.' Now she has two daughters of her own. What are they like?

After being with tennis player Andre Agassi in the 90s, including a brief marriage from 1997 to 1999, Brooke Shields met television writer Chris Henchy in 1999. They clicked right away and he became her second husband in 2001. The couple never separated, and he would be the father of Brooke's two daughters, Rowan and Grier.

The actress always wanted to be a mother, but it was a long and painful journey to get to that point. As she recounts in her book 'Down Came the Rain,' Brooke Shields underwent seven rounds of fertility treatments and had a miscarriage before she became pregnant with her first child.

After her first daughter was born, Shields suffered from postpartum depression, which turned her world upside down. In a podcast with Marc Maron, she said: "I couldn't understand my mind. It's the worst. It's taking everything that made me who I am and absolutely ripping my legs out from under me."

Eventually, after getting the help she needed, Brooke Shields enjoyed being the mother of Rowan Francis Henchy very much. The girl was born on May 15, 2003.

Time flew by, and in 2021, Rowan graduated from high school. To honor her mother, she wore a red strapless gown to senior prom that Shields had worn to the 1998 Golden Globes.

Photo: @brookeshields / Instagram

It may have seemed like a style choice, but to Brooke Shields, it meant a lot. "I thought it was a special night when I was nominated for a Golden Globe and wore this dress in 1998, but nothing could have prepared me to see my daughter wearing it to her prom. Proud mama!" she Shields posted on her Instagram account.

In August of the same year, Rowan headed to college at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A year later, Brooke Shields posted that she had trouble saying goodbye every time her daughter left the house: "Turns out second time is NOT the charm when it comes to your baby going off to college. Sophomore year, here she comes. I’ll be crying if you need me..."

Before Rowan left for college, mother and daughter got matching ladybug tattoos. They paid homage to Rowan's childhood nickname, "Ladybug."

Photo: brookeshields / Instagram

The second daughter of Brooke Shields is Grier Hammond Henchy. She was born on April 18, 2006. This time, Brooke recalls in her documentary 'Pretty Baby, Brooke Shields,' it was much easier for her to deal with the aftermath of her daughter's birth.

Even though Shields has recounted on various occasions (for example, in 'Pretty Baby') how difficult the fashion and entertainment industry can be for a young woman, her daughter Grier insisted on trying the same career path.

Grier walked the Victoria's Secret runway for its Mother's Day campaign in 2022 alongside her mother Brooke. "To be able to shoot this campaign with my daughter and to showcase the beauty of our relationship was a dream come true," Brooke would comment on Instagram.

In an interview with People, Shields admitted that she had "resisted" when her daughter told her she wanted to be a model. "But to watch her handle herself in a way, it makes me realize, okay, she's a pretty strong character."

Brooke has made peace with the fact that her daughter is trying a career in modeling, but she doesn't want to be too involved in it. As she explained on 'Live with Kelly and Mark,' she told Grier: "If you’re gonna do this, I’m not gonna be your manager. You're going to be with an agency. You’re going to have a great work ethic. It’s not going to be comfortable. You're gonna listen to me. And you're going to college!"

Shields never made a secret of her personal struggles as a mother. After her openhearted book about postpartum depression, 'Down Came the Rain,' in 2005, she continued to talk openly about the difficulties of parenting. In 2021, for example, she talked on the 'Armchair Expert' podcast about her fights with Grier.

As she recounted on the podcast, Grier, 15 at the time, showed her mom a dress she wanted to buy and Brooke had some comments about it. "Then I get a text that says, ‘I really don’t appreciate the way you talk to me. I think you talk to me like I am a child.’ And I'm like hmm okay," she said with a laugh. In the same podcast, she jokingly referred to the 15-year-old as an "a... hole."

Despite their occasional disagreements, the famous mother and daughter don't just model together but also exchange clothes! As Brooke Shields told People, "if I want to know where anything good that I have is, and I can't find it in my closet, I know exactly where to find it. It's her!"

Just like Rowan had done at senior prom, Grier honored her mother by putting on a vintage Dolce & Gabbana suit that Shields had worn on 'Suddenly Susan.' She wore it for a special occasion: the premiere of the documentary 'Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.'

The documentary tells all about the controversies surrounding Brooke Shields' work as a child actress. In the film 'Pretty Baby,' for example, she played a sensual girl at the age of 11 in a story that was definitely not meant for children. As she told People magazine, "there's a lot in the documentary... which I got in trouble with [Rowan and Grier] for."

Brooke Shields' daughters "were mad that I didn't inform them about everything" and they felt protective of the little girl their mom had once been. According to Shields in 'TODAY with Hoda and Jenna,' Grier said: "Nothing you say to me, Mom, is going to make it better... I hate seeing bad things happen to you."

Brooke Shields and her daughters are the living examples of how times have changed. When she was a child actress, she was expected to do whatever the grownups said. But her daughters are "confident and free... I'm proud of them speaking their mind."