Rohan Anthony Marley (born 19 May 1972) is a Jamaican entrepreneur and former college football player and Canadian Football League player. He is the son of reggae artist Bob Marley, and father of model Selah Marley, reggae artist YG Marley and former NFL football player Nico Marley. He was born out of wedlock from an affair that his father had with sixteen-year-old Janet Hunt during his marriage to singer Rita Marley. Rohan Marley went to live with his mother Janet on and off from the age of four[2][3][4] until moving to live with his paternal grandmother, Bob Marley’s mother Cedella Booker, after his father and the latter’s son died of cancer in Miami in 1981.[5]
In 2009, he co-founded Marley Coffee, an organic coffee plantation and sustainable farming business in Jamaica's Blue Mountains,[8] although the majority of coffee sourced through Marley Coffee is from Ethiopia. The business is run on a 52-acre estate in Portland Parish.[9] In 2011, Marley Coffee went public under the name Jammin Java (OTC:JAMN).
In January 2011, Marley advertised a new 'House of Marley' range of eco-friendly headphones at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. The range has since expanded and now produces headphones and speakers as well as turntables.[10]
Marley also helps run his family's charitable organization, 1Love, as well as the Tuff Gong clothing company.[11]
In popular culture
He made an appearance in the documentary film Motherland.[12]
Personal life
On 18 March 1993, as a sophomore at the University of Miami, Marley married his girlfriend Geraldine Khawly. They had a daughter, Eden (b. 1994), and a son, Nico (b. 1995), who was a linebacker at Tulane and was signed by the Washington Redskins in 2017.[13][14]
Marley met musician Lauryn Hill in 1996, and they had five children: Zion David (b. 1997), model Selah (b. 1998), singer songwriter Joshua Omaru, known professionally as YG Marley (b. 2001), John Nesta (b. 2003), and Sara (b. 2008).[15][16][17] Marley and Hill lived apart for most of their relationship, which ended in 2009. Marley provided temporary custody for their five children while Hill served a three-month prison sentence for tax evasion in 2013. While Hill sometimes referred to Marley as her husband, they never legally married.[18]
In 2003, Rolling Stone suggested that Marley had never divorced Khawly. However, in 2011, Marley produced a Haitian divorce decree which demonstrated that he had divorced Khawly in 1996.[9]
In early 2013, Marley was briefly engaged to Isabeli Fontana, but the engagement ended in early 2013.[11]
On 23 March 2019, Marley married Brazilian model Barbara Fialho in Montes Claros, Brazil,[19] five months before the birth of their daughter Maria.[20] Marley divorced Fialho the following year.[21][22]