10 Things You Didn’t Know About Reality Star Whitney Port

Get to know reality TV star, fashion designer, and entrepreneur Whitney Port.

There is perhaps no greater relic of the early 2000s than dramatized reality TV and no better example than The Hills. If you’re a fan of the cult classic show, then you're familiar with Whitney Port, but the television personality has a lot more to her than what meets the eye. Port's career in both in fashion and entertainment industry has grown tremendously in the past decade, and today, on her 38th birthday, L'OFFICIEL is taking you through 10 things you didn’t know about the author, fashion designer, wife, and mother.

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"The Hills" was not the only reality TV show she was a part of. After the show’s fourth season, she left fellow cast members Lauren Conrad, Heidi Montag, and Audrina Patridge in L.A. to pursue an internship with Diane von Fürstenberg in New York. Thus, the spinoff series “The City” was born. The show lasted only two seasons. It followed Port, her boyfriend Jay Lyon, and socialite Olivia Palermo as they navigated their jobs and relationships in the Big Apple.

Port met her husband, field producer of “The City” Tim Rosenman, on set, but they only started dating after the show wrapped. “I definitely made the first move,” she said in a 2015 interview. “I got his phone number and made up some excuse why I needed to reach him for something. I know, because of our jobs—because I was the talent and he was the producer—he wasn’t going to cross that line. It had to be me, you know.” After one year of dating, Rosenman proposed in 2013, and the couple married two years later in 2015.

Port’s father, Jeffrey Port, was also involved in fashion, sparking her interest in the field. He was the owner of the brand Swarm. After his passing in 2013, Port was motivated to continue working in the industry. “I worked with my father, so I feel like I’m trying to work even harder to do what he would want me to do and to motivate myself and live up to what our goals were,” she said in an interview. “Obviously, times are hard, but I’m the kind of person who is going to rise above it.”

Although Port and Rosenman welcomed baby boy Sonny Sanford Rosenman in 2017, their journey as parents hasn’t been an easy one. The entrepreneur has been very open about her experiences with miscarriage and the painful process of IVF. “Two days post egg retrieval, and I feel like I swallowed Sonny, and he’s dully kicking at my ovaries,” Port wrote in an Instagram caption last week. “This whole IVF thing is so crazy! It’s a legit science experiment that you do a lot ON YOURSELF, sometimes with a partner, both with little education and LOTS OF EMOTIONS. It is an inevitable colossal rollercoaster. One that you wish sometimes would abruptly end, and then at others, you feel on top of the world and more vital than anyone. It’s just so crazy.”

Port has made some exciting cameos in TV and film. In 2008 she was on an episode of “Entourage” titled “Gotta Look Up to Get Down.” Port also lent her voice to a 2009 episode of “Family Guy,” called “We Love You, Conrad,” in which Lauren Conrad and Drew Barrymore also guest-starred. Like any early 2000s fashion lover, Port was a guest on “America’s Next Top Model” in Cycle 14. She also played herself in the 2012 rom-com “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.”

Much like her co-star Lauren Conrad, Port released a tell-all book after the success of her reality TV stints. “True Whit: Designing a Life of Style, Beauty, and Fun” was published in 2011 and included advice, fashion and beauty secrets, personal essays on love and loss, and honest opinions on her many jobs in the industry.

Port launched her self-titled fashion line, Whitney Eve, from 2010 to 2013. Since then, she has moved into sustainable fashion with her new line CozeCo, collaborating with Avalon Apparel. The designer came up with the idea for the line during lockdown when everyone was wearing loungewear. “It’s what I wore the most and gravitated toward, but I felt there was really a hole in the marketplace for something that was affordable, accessible, direct-to-consumer, and completely organic and eco-friendly,” Port said about the brand.

Port was integral to creating MTV’s 2019 reboot, “The Hills: New Beginnings.” Starring many members of the original cast (Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt, Frankie Delgado, and Brody Jenner) as well as some surprising new faces: “The O.C.” alum Mischa Barton and Brandon Thomas Lee, the son of Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson.

Port has been expanding into the YouTube and podcasting spaces. In 2019, her podcast “With Whit” launched on all platforms. Although Port’s YouTube channel has existed since 2012, she started using it to react to old clips of her reality TV stints a few years ago. In a 2020 episode of “With Whit,” Port sat down with her former best friend Lauren Conrad to clear the air about their past. “I would say the question that I get asked the most of all time is, ‘Are you still friends with Lauren?’” Port told Conrad. “My answer to them is always, you know, it’s [like] friends that you went to college with. Good friends that you had really special experiences with, that you always have love for, but that you don’t always keep in touch with,” Port explained. Conrad responded in agreement, “I think, what you said is perfectly describing it. I have so much love in my heart for you and, like, we shared this really weird, unique thing…I’ll always remember you like that, and I’ll never have that with anybody else.”

Port was featured in the premiere episode of “The Collinas” with actress and model Tommy Dorfman. In lieu of a fashion show for New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2022, Collina Strada released a video parodying “The Hills” in which Dorfman interns at the fashion label in New York City. Port makes a cameo in the satiric short. “When [Dorfman] struggles to adapt to the workplace culture and a plant-based diet, her dream job turns into a wake-up call. Can Tommy make it in the high-stakes world of sustainable fashion?”