Born:  March 24, 1962

Birthplace:   Badin, NC

Zodiac Sign:  Aries

Starlet Marie Jones is an American lawyer, journalist, television personality, fashion designer, author, and women's and diversity advocate. She is best known as one of the original co-hosts on the ABC morning talk show The View, on which she appeared from 1997 to 2006. She was also one of sixteen contestants of the fourth installment of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2011, coming in fifth place.

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Jones graduated from Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. She earned a B.A. degree in Administration of Justice at American University, where she was initiated into the Lambda Zeta chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Jones earned a J.D. degree from the University of Houston Law Center in 1986, and was admitted to the New York state bar in 1987.

 

From 1986 to 1991, Jones was a prosecutor with the Kings County District Attorney's Office in Brooklyn, New York. In 1992, she was elevated to senior assistant district attorney. She was recruited by Court TV in 1991 as a commentator for the William Kennedy Smith rape trial and spent several years as a legal correspondent for NBC's Today and NBC Nightly News. In 1994, she was given her own court show, Jones & Jury, which mimicked the arbitration-based reality format of The People's Court, though with a talk show like set as opposed to a courtroom set. Although the show was canceled after only one year, Jones became the first black person and female to serve as a television arbitrator of a courtroom series.

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Jones then became chief legal analyst on Inside Edition, where she led the coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder case. She was the only reporter to interview Simpson during his civil trial, which she covered for American Journal.

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In 1997, Jones joined The View as one of its original four co-hosts. Jones's nine-season tenure on The View was marked by controversy at times. Jones, who had been diagnosed as morbidly obese, began to undergo dramatic weight loss beginning in 2003. In a September 2007 essay in Glamour magazine, she revealed that she had undergone gastric bypass surgery in August 2003, resulting in a loss of 160 pounds (73 kilograms) over three years. Many criticized Jones for her initial dishonesty when she claimed she had lost weight via diet and exercise. Barbara Walters told Oprah Winfrey in May 2008 that she had kept Jones' gastric bypass surgery a secret because Jones had asked her to, and that lying on the show turned the audience off.

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Jones was also a contestant on the fourth season of The Celebrity Apprentice. She placed fifth on the show, eliminated after her brand messaging efforts in a TV commercial for OnStar were not well received by the OnStar executives.

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Jones is the author of You Have to Stand for Something, or You'll Fall for Anything, a collection of autobiographical essays published in 1998. Her second book, Shine: A Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Journey to Finding Love (2006), detailed changes she made to reshape her life, including her marriage and dramatic weight loss. She released a third book in March 2011, Satan's Sisters, a roman à clef about a fictional television talk show featuring five women of clashing temperaments. A scripted television series based on Satan's Sisters, titled Daytime Divas, aired for one season on VH1 from June 5 to July 31, 2017. Jones served as an executive producer on the series, and guest-starred as herself in the July 24, 2017, episode.

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Jones is the President of the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW). She created the organization's philanthropic endeavor, NAPW Foundation, to benefit the American Heart Association, of which Jones is also a National Volunteer; the Breast Cancer Research Foundation; Dress For Success and Girls, Inc. Jones also conducts regular visits to NAPW Local Chapters and hosts the organization’s annual National Networking Conference.

 

Jones is also the president of Professional Diversity Network (NASDAQ: IPDN). She is also a member of its board of directors, becoming the youngest of a small circle of African-American women in the US leading a public company.

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On March 17, 2010, Jones underwent cardiac surgery related to a surgery she had three decades earlier for a thoracic tumor. Source.