(1990 - 1993) (divorced) (1 child)
Her first marriage lasted only a couple of years, and Jnifen settled in Italy and in 1990 married lawyer Marco Squatriti, with whom she has a son. She became an unlikely TV star, hosting satirical talk shows and goofy variety programs such as Nonsolomoda, where her quick wit and fierce opinions made it clear she was no ordinary velina—the term for the sexy but often bubble-headed starlets who populate Italian television. ­Jnifen’s new status as gossip-page fixture sometimes put her self-­assurance to the test, particularly after 2001, by which point she had divorced ­Squatriti and married Tronchetti, the longtime head of Pirelli, who had just engineered a bold takeover that gave him control of the sacred national giant Telecom Italia. The deal came under attack from multiple sides, and Tronchetti was eventually forced to sell; meanwhile, the union of the dashing mogul and the younger former model from North Africa gave rise to all the kinds of sniping you’d expect. (Gossips whispered that Jnifen had grown up dirt-poor and fabricated her diplomat’s-daughter background—and that she was cheating on her husband.) Jnifen’s friends see it as a textbook case of sour grapes, with some ugly racial overtones. “Look,” Hashemi says, “Marco is this classy, wealthy, handsome man with a very important position in Italy. And this Tunisian girl took him away. It’s as simple as that.”