When she was young, Susan Lieberman (62) embraced alongside her two brothers the leitmotifs of their father: play hard, think positively, embrace life, and be the best. Thanks to this, she has remained an independent woman despite being married to Michael Dell (61), president and CEO of Dell Technologies and considered by Forbes magazine as the fourth richest man in the world with over 277,000 billion dollars.
Entrepreneur, fashion designer, philanthropist, and sports enthusiast, Susan is so determined and pragmatic that most of the time she achieves what she sets out to do. Above all, helping the most vulnerable, such as children in the United States.
Therefore, together with her husband, in December 2025, they committed to distribute around 6.25 billion dollars to each of the 25 million children under 18 years old in the country. That is, depositing 250 dollars to each child through the famous 'Trump accounts' for investment and retirement.
During the Dell couple's visit to the Oval Office of the White House on October 7th, President Trump listened (half asleep) to Michael's speech in which he said: "I am pleased to inform you that today, up until this morning, we have funded 10 million of those accounts," said Michael, "and by the end of this week, we will have funded 25 million of those accounts."
After that, Trump asked Susan if she wanted to add anything: "Over the past month, as our contribution reached millions of children's accounts, Michael and I have received lovely letters from many parents, children, and grandparents that have deeply moved us." And he continued: "The children have told us they want to be entrepreneurs, nurses, doctors, engineers. They want to start their own businesses someday."
Now, days after this wave of insults, her husband has not hesitated to defend his wife. Although he did not directly respond to online comments, he chose to highlight the positive reactions of users to their donation. The official profile of the tech entrepreneur shared several messages of thank you letters, many of them handwritten by children.
"Dear Dell family, thank you for the money in my Trump account. I am very happy to be saving for my future," confessed one; "It's truly how evil and conceited some people are," wrote a user on X commenting that his two children had received 250 dollars each; "My grandson received 250 dollars in his Trump account thanks to Susan Dell. Please leave that woman alone," another commented.
One of the most well-known defenders has been Eric Trump, the third and last child the president had with his first wife, the late Ivana Trump: "People are horrible. Susan and Michael Dell have just deposited 6.25 billion dollars into the Trump accounts for 25 million children to have something waiting for them when they grow up; one of the largest private donations in the history of the United States, if not the largest (...) I'm tired of this nonsense. Very few people have done more for philanthropy. It's disgusting and it has to stop. Susan, on behalf of the vast majority of the people in this nation: Thank you! You're amazing!"
Susan grew up in an upper-middle-class family in a five-bedroom house in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of Dallas where her father was a renowned oncologist. Susan has always liked beauty and never left the house without looking impeccable. She was impeccable in her appearance, even when she practiced sports on weekends with her family. Those activities instilled a strong competitive spirit in her, eventually becoming a high-performance athlete who competed in the 2003 Ironman Championship in Kona, Hawaii.
In high school, she was chosen as "sophomore beauty" and at the suggestion of her mother's friends, she started working as a model in department store catalogs. She was very successful with boys, as her brother Randy recalled for Texas Monthly. "Susan always dated star athletes: the quarterback, the baseball team pitcher. She didn't take things seriously with them, but they did."
After moving to Austin to work in real estate at Trammell Crow, one of her clients mentioned that she would make a good match with a young man who promised to be a computer genius. In 1988, Susan was 22 years old, about to graduate in Marketing and Fashion Design from the University of Arizona, and met Michael Dell on a blind date. He had started his career selling PCs from his university residence room. That same year, his company went public, and its shares reached 100 million dollars.
"Most of the men I dated talked a lot about themselves and tried to impress me," Susan recalled at that time, referring to her husband, she said he was "the kindest man I had ever met." Their courtship was brief, and they married in 1989.
They have four children, Kira, Juliette, Alexa, and Zach, with whom they have shared the best moments of their lives at The Castle, the impregnable mansion the Dells custom-built on top of a hill in Austin, Texas, surrounded by high perimeter walls and strict security. The 3,000-square-meter house has eight bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, and several pools.
As Susan wanted to be an independent woman, thanks to her university knowledge, she decided to found her own luxury clothing brand called Phi, inspired by the style of Texas high society ladies. Laura Bush was one of her main clients when she commissioned several designs for herself and her daughters at her husband George Bush's first presidential inauguration.
After leaving the business, she has dedicated herself wholeheartedly to philanthropy worldwide through the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.