Diane Plese is best known as the first wife of Robert Herjavec, the Canadian businessman and Shark Tank investor. The story of Diane Plese and Robert Herjavec runs from a 1990 wedding to one of Ontario’s most closely watched high-income divorce cases. If you’re asking who is Diane Plese outside that outline, the public record is mostly court documents, and the pages offering a precise Diane Plese age or Diane Plese net worth often contradict what those documents say.
She’s searched constantly, and the results are the usual pile of near-identical pages. One calls her an ophthalmologist who still runs her own practice. Another says she received a “$25 million settlement”. A third gives her a $100 million fortune. Each claim sounds specific, and each falls apart against the Ontario court rulings that actually exist.
This profile sticks to Wikipedia, the published court decisions and the legal commentary written about them, flags everything else as repeated rather than confirmed, and leaves out her children’s details, her address and anything about her life since the case ended. She’s a private person whose finances were examined in public because of a divorce.
Diane Plese Quick Facts
| Topic | Available Information |
| Name | Diane Plese |
| Known for | First wife of Robert Herjavec; applicant in the Ontario case Plese v. Herjavec |
| Marriage | Robert Herjavec: married 1990, divorced 2016, per Wikipedia |
| Separation | Reported as July 2014 |
| Court case | Began March 3, 2015; trial decision December 2018; Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal in December 2020 |
| Court-ordered support | $125,000 a month in spousal support with no end date, plus a $2,689,558 equalization payment, per the appeal summary |
| Children | Three; their details are private |
| Profession | Optometrist; reported to have left paid work around 2003 |
| Age | Described as 56 in the 2018 ruling, so about 63 or 64 now; birth date not publicly confirmed |
| Birthplace | Not publicly confirmed; Toronto and Croatia both appear |
| Education | Not publicly confirmed |
| Social media | No verified accounts found |
| Net worth | No reliable current figure; 2018 court-derived estimates vary widely |
The first eight rows are well supported by court records. From “age” down, it’s mostly estimation, repetition or silence.
Who Is Diane Plese?
A Canadian optometrist who married Robert Herjavec in 1990 and left the marriage in a case that produced two published court decisions. Wikipedia’s infobox for Herjavec lists her as his first spouse, married in 1990 and divorced in 2016, and that’s all it says about her.
Almost everything else comes from the rulings themselves, which describe her work history, the couple’s property and the support she was awarded. I found no interview, no book and no verified social media account under her name.
Why Is Diane Plese Famous?
She isn’t, in her own right. She’s searched for because of who she married and because of what a court ordered.
Herjavec is a Croatian-Canadian businessman and television personality, per Wikipedia, who founded a cybersecurity company and became a fixture on Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den. When his marriage ended, the Ontario Superior Court examined a very large family estate and ordered monthly spousal support of $125,000, an amount legal commentators picked up because of its size. That ruling, not any career of her own, is what keeps her name in search results.
Diane Plese and Robert Herjavec: How They Met
Several lifestyle pages say Herjavec first met her as a patient at the eye clinic where she worked, in the late 1980s. One gives the year as 1988. It’s a charming story and it may well be true, but I couldn’t find it in a court record or an interview, so it stays in the weakly supported pile.
The same goes for pages that describe a Croatian ceremony, a childhood in Toronto’s Parkdale or parents who emigrated from Croatia. None of them names a source.
The Marriage
They married in 1990, per Wikipedia, and the marriage lasted about 24 years before the separation. Herjavec founded his first security company that same year, and Wikipedia says he did so from the basement of his home, which tells you where the family started.
Court summaries add the part that matters most to this story. They say Plese worked full time in eye care in the early years, cut back after the first child, and left paid work around 2003 to look after the home and the children. The judge treated that as an economic sacrifice, and it shaped the support order.
Why Did Diane Plese and Robert Herjavec Divorce?
Nobody has explained it publicly. Reports say the couple separated in July 2014, and the court case began in March 2015, according to commentary on the rulings. Neither of them has given an account that I could find, and the judgments deal with money and parenting rather than motives.
Some pages say he left her for Kym Johnson, the Dancing with the Stars professional who became his second wife. The timeline doesn’t fit: Wikipedia says Johnson’s return to the American version of the show was announced on February 11, 2015, and she was paired with Herjavec after that, well after the reported separation. I’d call the “left her for Kym” version unsupported.
The Court Case: Plese v. Herjavec
Plese started the family law case on March 3, 2015. The trial judge ruled in December 2018, in Plese v. Herjavec, 2018 ONSC 7749. According to a summary of the Court of Appeal decision, the trial judge ordered Herjavec to pay a lump-sum equalization payment of $2,689,558 and spousal support of $125,000 a month.
The ruling set no termination date for the support, and the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal in December 2020 in Plese v Herjavec, 2020 ONCA 810, leaving the support order in place. Law-firm commentary notes the judge found she had been unable to contribute to her own support since 2003. The same commentary says the monthly figure was lower than what the Spousal Support Advisory Guidelines would otherwise suggest.
Diane Plese’s Children
Three, according to Wikipedia and the court coverage. The case also dealt with child support, but I haven’t repeated any of that, and I haven’t looked for names, ages or schools.
They’re people with their own lives, and nothing about this article requires their details. If a page offers any, I’d be wary of it.
What Does Diane Plese Do for a Living?
She trained as an optometrist, and that’s the profession the court commentary uses. Pages that call her an ophthalmologist have got it wrong; those are medical doctors, a different qualification.
One lifestyle site also says she “runs her own eye care practice in Toronto, which she has maintained throughout and after her marriage”. That’s contradicted by the court summaries, which say she left paid work around 2003 and was unlikely to return to her profession by 2018. I found no source for any current work, so I’ve left it as unconfirmed.
Diane Plese’s Age and Birthplace
Her exact age isn’t confirmed. Many pages say she was born in 1959 and give an age of 66 or 67. That doesn’t match the court coverage, which describes her as 56 when the trial decision came out in December 2018. That would put her birth in about 1962, and make her roughly 63 or 64 in October 2026.
That’s my arithmetic from a legal summary, not a birth record, so treat it as an estimate. The 1959 date appears on several lifestyle sites without any source, and I’d trust the court’s figure over it. Birthplace is murkier still: pages say Toronto, Croatia, or “Parkdale”, and none cites a record.
What Is Diane Plese’s Net Worth?
There’s no current figure worth trusting. Sites that say $100 million cite wealth-tracker pages that don’t explain their numbers, and the court rulings say nothing like that.
What the legal commentary does say is more modest and varies with what’s counted. One summary says she retained close to $13.5 million in capital after equalization, another says she had about $20 million in assets from the marriage, and a third says she left with approximately $25 million, including the equalization payment. That last number is where the “$25 million settlement” line comes from, and it’s a total, not a cheque. None of these is a current net worth, because they describe 2018 and exclude whatever has happened since.
Where Is Diane Plese Now?
I won’t speculate about where she lives. Many pages say “Canada” and leave it there, which is probably the safest guess available. Others describe a quiet life focused on family, which is plausible but unverifiable.
The last confirmed events in her story are the 2018 trial ruling and the 2020 appeal decision, both about money. I found no later public statement from her.
Rumours and Mistakes About Diane Plese
The same errors keep circulating. She’s called an ophthalmologist, a woman who still runs a clinic, a billionaire’s wife with a $100 million fortune, and the recipient of a lump-sum $25 million settlement. Several give the marriage as 24 years, others 25, and a few say the divorce was in 2015, though Wikipedia says 2016.
It helps to look at how a claim is phrased. A real source says who, where and when. A weaker one says “reportedly” or “she chose dignity” and stops. When a profile gives you a vague fortune and no case name, you can stop reading. The court decisions are public, which makes it easy to check, and many of these pages clearly didn’t.
Why Diane Plese Stays Out of the Spotlight
I won’t invent a reason. Plenty of people who were once married to a public figure live quietly, and nothing suggests she has tried to profit from the connection. What you can observe is the absence: no interviews, no book, no verified accounts.
Several pages frame that as a noble, deliberate choice. It may be. It may also be that her life was disrupted enough by a public court case that she wanted nothing more to do with publicity. Without her own words, a motive is just a story somebody else wrote.
Separating Facts From Myths About Diane Plese
Reasonably well-supported: she’s Robert Herjavec’s first wife, they married in 1990 and divorced in 2016, she’s an optometrist who left paid work around 2003, and the court ordered $125,000 a month in spousal support plus a $2,689,558 equalization payment, with the Court of Appeal dismissing his appeal in December 2020.
Weakly supported or unconfirmed: that they met at her eye clinic in 1988, her birthplace, her education, the exact separation date, and any estimate of her current wealth. Her age is an inference from the court’s description of her as 56 in 2018.
Not supported at all: that she’s an ophthalmologist, that she still runs a practice, that she has a $100 million fortune, that a $25 million settlement was paid as a lump sum, that Herjavec left her for Kym Johnson, and that she was born in 1959.
A Timeline of Diane Plese’s Publicly Known Story
Around 1962 (inferred): Likely birth year, based on the court’s description of her as 56 in 2018.
1988 (unconfirmed): Lifestyle pages say she and Robert Herjavec meet at her eye clinic.
1990: Plese and Herjavec marry, per Wikipedia.
Around 2003: She leaves paid work to care for the home and children, per court summaries.
July 2014: The couple separate, per reports.
March 3, 2015: She begins the family law case in Ontario.
2016: The divorce is final, per Wikipedia, and Herjavec marries Kym Johnson.
December 2018: The trial decision orders $125,000 a month in spousal support and a $2,689,558 equalization payment.
December 2020: The Ontario Court of Appeal dismisses the appeal and leaves the support order in place.
Why People Keep Searching for Diane Plese
It comes down to the size of the numbers. A monthly support figure of $125,000 gets headlines, and each wave of coverage about Herjavec, Shark Tank or Dancing with the Stars sends readers looking for the first wife. A former spouse with no public footprint is exactly the sort of search content farms love, because there’s demand and little on record that readers think to check.
That’s why the pages sound so alike. They’re answering a question the record can only partly answer, and each one makes the next look more like consensus.
Diane Plese in 2026
She’s still a private person and still the first wife of Robert Herjavec. The most recent verified developments are the 2020 appeal decision and the court summaries about it, and there’s no public update I could verify since. Almost everything else, from her age to her bank balance, is unconfirmed or contradicted from one source to the next.
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Frequently Asked Questions About Diane Plese
Who is Diane Plese?
Diane Plese is a Canadian optometrist best known as the first wife of Robert Herjavec. They married in 1990 and divorced in 2016, and the case produced two published Ontario court decisions.
How much spousal support was Diane Plese awarded?
The court ordered $125,000 a month in spousal support with no end date, plus a $2,689,558 equalization payment. The Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed Herjavec’s appeal in December 2020.
How old is Diane Plese?
Her age is not publicly confirmed. A legal summary describes her as 56 at the 2018 ruling, which suggests she’s about 63 or 64 in 2026. Pages saying she was born in 1959 don’t match that.
Did Robert Herjavec leave Diane Plese for Kym Johnson?
The reported timeline doesn’t support that. The couple separated in July 2014, according to reports, and Johnson’s return to the show where she met Herjavec was announced in February 2015.
What is Diane Plese’s net worth?
There is no reliable, independently verified net-worth figure for Diane Plese. Court-derived estimates from 2018 range from about $13.5 million to about $25 million depending on what’s counted, and none describes her wealth today.
Diane Plese’s public story is short and mostly legal: a 1990 wedding, a long marriage, a court case that ended with a support order and a long silence that other people have filled with guesses. That’s what the record supports, and anything beyond it is somebody’s guess.