Roxy founder Jill Dodd reveals she was Saudi billionaire's 'pleasure wife'

The founder of popular surf brand Roxy has revealed she used to be a “pleasure wife” for a Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman.

Jill Dodd, who was also a model, said she was one of Adnan Khashoggi’s numerous wives and he would lavish her with gifts.

Mr Khashoggi is best known for his involvement in arms dealing and is estimated to have enjoyed a peak net worth of around $4 billion in the early 1980s.

During an appearance on 60 Minutes on Australian TV Channel 9 News on Sunday, Ms Dodd recalled her time with him.

Ms Dodd, who has also written a new memoir, said she first encountered him in the 1980s when she was a 21-year-old aspiring model living in Paris.

The former model, now a 57-year-old mother of three, said she met him at a party on the French Riviera but it was not until they had a romantic dance together that she was told who she had been dancing with.

"Suddenly, my dance partner stopped, grabbed a chair and threw it into the fire. I hurled one in too. We laughed and slammed together like two magnets, whirling around before the flames," she recalled.

"Giddy and out of breath, I finally sat down. My new friend gazed into my eyes as he tenderly pushed up my sleeves and used his fingertips to write 'I love you' in red on my forearm. It took me a minute to realise it was in blood. Accidentally or not, he had cut himself with a piece of glass."

Within a day, he had invited her to join him on his yacht. At that point, the 83m Nabila was at that point was the world’s biggest private cruiser and it would go on to be featured in James Bond film Never Say Never Again, before being sold to the Sultan of Brunei and later being owned by Donald Trump.

While Mr Khashoggi had a legal wife, at the time he informed Ms Dodd that according to Saudi law he was allowed 11 pleasure wives. In the weeks after their first encounter, he asked her to be one of them.

The pair would enjoy decadent dinners and attend high-end parties dressed in the highest couture.

“We would lock ourselves in a room for days and we would make love, we would eat, the chef would bring us food, we would do cocaine and sleep when we wanted and not sleep when we wanted,” she recalled.

After two years of spending time with him, Mr Khashoggi offered to pay Ms Dodd’s tuition at one of America’s top design colleges. She later utilised this education to help create her fashion brand Roxy which was founded in 1989.

Ms Dodd, who lives in Marin County, California with her husband, insisted that she never perceived herself as a “hooker” and still does not to this very day. Nevertheless, she found herself falling for him as time went by and towards the end of 1981 she began to feel uncomfortable with the unusual arrangement and the relationship eventually drew to a close in 1982.

"But I never forfeited my independence, ambition or creative expression when I was with Adnan and have no regrets," she said.