Melissa Francis was born to stand in front of the cameras. Even before she could say her own name, she had started appearing in TV commercials. Later, Melissa Francis switched to acting and then to TV journalism.
One of the highlights of her acting career was the role of Cassandra Cooper Ingalls in the 1980s TV show Little House on the Prairie. In recent years she has appeared as a presenter and anchor on the Fox News Channel and Fox Business News.
Melissa Francis Bio
Melissa was born on December 12, 1972, in Los Angeles, California, as Melissa Ann Francis. Her mother began to push her into the world of entertainment even before her first birthday. Together with her sister Tiffany, who has since passed away, Melissa began appearing in TV commercials. Her first commercial job was for a Johnson & Johnson shampoo when she was just 6 months old. Melissa would later appear in over 100 commercials.
From commercials, she won small roles in TV shows and movies. Some of her earliest roles were: …Scavenger Hunt, Man, Woman and Child, and Bad Dreams. Melissa was more active on the small screen. She played the lead role in “Joe’s World” and her most successful television appearance came in the successful TV series “Little House on the Prairie”. Melissa played her role for a year, from 1981 to 1982.
About a decade later, Melissa gave up acting and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to go to Harvard. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. During her time at Harvard, Melissa served as managing editor of The Harvard College Economist magazine. She played polo as her after-school activity and even became captain of the Harvard polo team.
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Before graduating from college, Melissa completed two internships at NBC. After graduating, she became a reporter for New Jersey’s News 12 and then became a presenter and reporter for several New England television stations in Manchester, Hartford, and Providence. Among others, she produced for WCSH-TV (NBC) in Portland and did the research for the MacNeil/Teacher NewsHour.
She later became a correspondent for CNET. Here she focused on reporting on financial, technology, and consumer issues. During this time she also worked for CNBC and reported for the media.
In 2003, Melissa joined CNBC as an energy reporter, reporting on energy issues and the activities of the giant companies behind these issues. She also hosted two news programs: The Call and Power Lunch. It is said that she was the first reporter to report live from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Fox News Career
In January 2012 Melissa Francis joined the FOX Business Network as a moderator and financial news reporter. Together with David Asman, she is the co-host of After The Bell, which airs on weekdays from 16:00-5:00. Two years later, in 2014, she became co-host of Fox News Channel’s Outnumbered, which airs at 12:00 CET on weekdays. Melissa is also the host of the news show Happening Now.
Melissa Francis’ Husband
Melissa is married to Wray Thorn. She met him while she was in college in Boston. Thorn proposed to her at the top of the Empire State Building, and they were married in 1997. Thorn is the CEO of Two Sigma Ventures. According to his LinkedIn profile, he began his career at Chemical Bank as part of the acquisition finance group.
At Two Sigma, Thorn leads the private investment and venture companies. The couple has three children, including two sons and a daughter. Their daughter, the youngest, was born by surrogacy after her doctor determined that a third pregnancy would be too risky for Melissa, who was diagnosed with a hereditary condition called Factor V Leiden. As a result of the disease, Melissa’s first two pregnancies were high risk.
The family lives in a 3,100 square meter loft in Carnegie Hil, which she purchased in 2010 for over $4 million.
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Her Father and Mother
Melissa published a treacherous memoir entitled “Diary of a Stage Mother-Daughter”. It was about her childhood and her upbringing by a very poisonous and arrogant mother. She described all the terrible things her mother had done to her, including a time when her mother threw her out of the car and asked her to find a way home. She was just 8 years old.
Melissa’s mother even stole the money she made from commercials and movies. Her overbearing attitude drove her older sister Tiffany into bad relationships that encouraged her to take drugs and alcohol. Tiffany would later die of addiction.
At the age of 15, Melissa was emancipated from her mother. She revealed little about her father, including that he owned a small business and worked very hard at it. Melissa also mentioned that her father was a source of strength and motivated her that she could be anything she wanted if she just focused on it. However, most of the time her father reacted to her mother’s toxicity in a rather passive-aggressive way, which unfortunately was not enough.
Luckily for Melissa, she stayed strong and made the best of her life, which unfortunately cannot be said of her late sister, who in most cases argued with her mother.
Net Worth – How Rich Is She?
Melissa may have lost much of the money she earned from acting, but fortunately, she was able to win it back with a successful journalism career. She earns an estimated $100,000 salary from FOX. Her net worth was estimated at about $5 million.