Sasha & Malia Obama's Ridiculously Lavish Lives Are Hard To Believe

For Michelle Obama, it was crucial that her kids didn't grow up too privileged, despite the significant lifestyle changes that came with the family's move to the White House in 2009. However, Sasha Obama and Malia Obama still got to live large by taking advantage of the many extraordinary opportunities Barack Obama's presidency afforded them, including access to celebrities and big-name designers.

Michelle realized from the start that Sasha and Malia, who were 7 and 10 respectively, when Barack started his first term as president, could easily get spoiled by the many amenities available at their new home. They had access to a movie theater and bowling alley, and staffers were on call who could help them keep their rooms clean or bring them their favorite snacks. Speaking to her late mother, Marian Robinson, on "The Michelle Obama" podcast, the former first lady said, "Putting them in a historic mansion with butlers and maids and florists and gardeners and Secret Service, and then trying to make sure that they understood boundaries, understood responsibility ... you had to basically upend the system of the White House ... to make sure these girls had some semblance of normalcy."

But Sasha and Malia getting their own Secret Service code names? Anything but normal. On "The Late Show," Michelle revealed that the sisters even got driving lessons from their security detail. "Malia told me her first driving lesson was on the Secret Service driving range," she revealed. Now, that truly is a singular experience that no amount of money can buy. Getting to meet the music industry's biggest teen idols and being given exclusive tours of the world's most iconic landmarks while traversing the globe are also pretty priceless opportunities.

The novelty of meeting celebrities has probably long since worn off for Sasha and Malia Obama. One of the sisters' first star encounters came the night of their dad's 2009 inauguration when their reward for completing a scavenger hunt at the White House was a performance by the Jonas Brothers. They'd previously met the boy band at the Kids' Inaugural Concert. "At the very end, me and Kevin gave our guitars to the girls, and signed 'em," Nick Jonas recalled to Barbara Walters (via ABC News).

Two years later, Sasha and Malia had a December to remember when they joined Justin Bieber, Jennifer Hudson, and Victoria Justice on stage at the Christmas in Washington concert. Sasha was positively beaming when she got a hug from the Biebs. The entire Obama family is also close with Beyoncé, Jay-Z, and the couple's kids, and Sasha and Malia have several celebrities in their inner circle. They scored invites to Billie Eilish's 2024 Halloween party, and the Obama siblings rocked bold looks while partying with Drake in 2023. They've become so famous in their own right that they can also leave some celebs starstruck. After meeting them at the Made in America Festival in 2016, Lil Yachty told Fader, "I was shocked that Malia and Sasha were asking me for pictures."

Malia even developed working relationships with some stars. After deciding to pursue a career in the entertainment industry, she joined the writing team for the Donald Glover series "Swarm." Before that, she cut her teeth as a production assistant on "Extant" and left a positive impression on the show's star, Halle Berry. "I was such a huge fan of hers. She was a-mazing," Berry said on "Watch What Happens Live."

Thanks to their dad's dual presidential victories, Sasha Obama and Malia Obama got travel opportunities many Americans can only dream of, and their journeys doubled as invaluable educational experiences. Each time they took a trip abroad, they were given mini-briefings beforehand. "I want my kids to be educated and have as much information as they can about the countries that they're visiting," Michelle Obama told People.

The sisters' travel itinerary was packed during Barack Obama's first year in office. It included stops at the Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre. The Obamas also headed across the pond to the U.K., where Sasha and Malia enjoyed a special treat during their Buckingham Palace visit. In an X video honoring Queen Elizabeth II after her death in 2022, Barack recalled, "Her Majesty had invited Michelle and the two girls to tea. She had then offered the girls to drive in her golden carriage around the grounds of Buckingham Palace."

Sasha and Malia continued their globetrotting in subsequent years. No tourists got in their way when they took in breathtaking vistas from atop the Great Wall of China in 2014, and during their dad's historical 2016 Cuba visit, Malia got put to work as an interpreter. "Her Spanish is much better than mine," Barack admitted to ABC News. The traveling didn't stop after the family left the White House. When they spent some time in Bali in 2017, their accommodations weren't too shabby: the Four Seasons Resort, where rooms cost over $2,000 a night. Their farmhouse rental for their 2019 vacation in the south of France was even pricier: around $60,000 a week. But nothing tops their 2023 Greek vacay, where they dined al fresco with Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson.

During their early years in the White House, Michelle Obama often dressed her girls in modestly priced clothing from J.Crew. However, the former first daughters also dazzled in some outfits with eye-watering price tags. For their first State Dinner in 2016, Malia Obama wore a beaded Naeem Khan gown worth around $18,000. Sasha Obama's appliqué-embellished dress from the same designer was even costlier, creeping close to being a 20 grand purchase. However, Barack Obama's conservative critics were disappointed to discover that they couldn't use the garments as examples of wasteful spending, as they were loans.

After their first daughter days were finished, the Obama sisters adopted pretty casual street styles. However, they peppered their outfits with designer pieces, such as the Jean Paul Gaultier tee Sasha wore to a Charli XCX concert in 2024 and the green $425 Alexander Wang shirt dress Malia wore to work in 2017 when she was interning at the Weinstein Company's NYC offices. The Harvard grad got a bit more daring for that 2023 Drake party, where she rocked a trendy KNWLS top. Dua Lipa had previously worn the same racy lace-up design. Malia opted for another edgy look, a plaid Vivienne Westwood top and skirt, when she attended the 2024 Deauville American Film Festival.

Of course, Sasha and Malia also own some stylish bags to toss all their going-out necessities in. For a Parisian date with her now-ex Rory Farquharson, Malia carried a $395 Mansur Gavriel bucket bag. But if there's some sartorial sibling rivalry going on here, her younger sibling is tough competition; Sasha was spied toting around a $257 Telfar bag on campus at the University of Southern California, where she was presumably using it to haul around her books and other school supplies.

Before Sasha Obama and Malia Obama moved into the White House, they were already getting seriously spoiled on their birthdays — so much so that Michelle Obama and Barack Obama decided that the girls wouldn't be disappointed if they didn't get any gifts from their parental units. "They get so much stuff that it just becomes numbing," Michelle told People in 2008. However, she and Barack Obama still had to whip out the credit cards on their daughters' special days. "We spend hundreds of dollars on a birthday party and movie tickets and pizza and popcorn," she revealed.

Birthdays got a little more lavish when the Obamas moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sasha's first birthday as a first daughter was one for the books, thanks to a little royal intervention. According to Hello!, Queen Elizabeth II invited her and her family to take a special tour of Buckingham Palace as a birthday treat. While in the U.K., Sasha also scored tickets to "The Lion King" musical at London's West End.

Malia also marked one of her major milestones by experiencing a little bit of that Disney magic. In 2014, her parents sent her to Disneyland to celebrate her sweet 16. Barack ensured that her 18th birthday was another memorable one by singing "Happy Birthday" to her slightly off-key during an Independence Day party at the White House — in front of professional singers Janelle Monáe and Kendrick Lamar. Being born on the Fourth of July means that there's always something big going on when Malia celebrates her birthday, or, as Barack put it on Instagram in 2021, "I miss the days when you thought the fireworks were for you." And there you have evidence of where Sasha and Malia's real riches lie.