“Why Prince Harry Turned Down His Multimillion-Dollar Inheritance from Princess Diana and the Couple’s Reasons for Not Using It”

Leaving royal life in 2020 put Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in a financial bind. They had to figure out how to make money without any financial support from the now-King Charles III. Spoiler: They did. Their net worth since leaving the royal family is estimated to be $60 million, thanks to lucrative media deals. One thing the Duke and Duchess didn’t want to do was spend the inheritance from Princess Diana. Ahead, why Harry only wanted to touch his inheritance as a “last resort.”

When Diana died in August 1997, Harry — and his older brother, Prince William — received millions in inheritance that resided in a trust until they came of age.

How much? Approximately £10 million, or $13.8 million, which reportedly worked out to $10 million after taxes.

Upon turning 25, Harry and the now-Prince of Wales began receiving dividends worth $450,000 annually. Once he and William turned 30, however, they reportedly gained access to the capital.

Harry also inherited money from his great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother. Unlike the Diana inheritance, however, he and William didn’t receive the same amount. Harry received a larger sum of the $18 million left to them because, as heir to the throne, William received the lucrative Duchy of Cornwall estate upon becoming Prince of Wales in 2022.

Harry discussed his inheritance from his late mother and why he and Meghan didn’t want to spend any of it in his 2023 Spare memoir.

When the pair were staying at Tyler Perry’s home in Beverly Hills, California, with a baby Prince Archie, pressure mounted to “find somewhere new” as their whereabouts became public.

“We’d need to find somewhere new, and soon, and that would mean paying for our own security,” Harry wrote. So he pored over notes and returned to contacting security firms as he’d done previously.

“Meg and I sat down to work out exactly how much security we could afford, and how much house,” he recalled. “Exactly then, while were were revising our budget, word came down: Pa was cutting me off.”

As a result, “the question of how to pay for a home and security kept Meg and me awake at nights. We could always spend some of my inheritance from Mummy [Diana], we said, but that felt like a last resort.”

Why? Because they “saw that money belonging to Archie. And his sibling.” Archie became a big brother with the birth of his sister, Princess Lilibet, 2, in June 2021.

Turns out that Harry and Meghan ended up using at least some of the money from Diana. In their 2021 Oprah interview, Harry shared that the inheritance from his late mother funded his family’s move to Montecito, California.

“I had to afford security for us,” Harry said at the time, noting he’d been cut off financially from his father “in the first quarter of 2020. But I’ve got what my mom left me, and without that, we would not have been able to do this.”

Harry described how they ended up in their current home in Spare, writing they “found a place” at a “steep discount,” even asking Tyler Perry to tour the property and share his thoughts (he approved).

Soon after, the couple “pulled together a down payment” and “took out a mortgage.” Finally, in July 2020, they moved in, taking 13 suitcases containing everything they owned to their new home.