Myrna Colley-Lee: Where Is Morgan Freeman’s Ex-Wife Today?

Myrna Colley-Lee is an American costume designer, arts patron, and curator with a career that spans more than five decades. Many people first hear her name as the second wife of actor Morgan Freeman, to whom she was married from 1984 to 2010.

That label only tells part of her story. Long before and long after that marriage, Colley-Lee built a respected name in American theatre, especially in the Black Theatre Movement, designing costumes for major productions of August Wilson and other leading writers, and supporting the arts across Mississippi.

Quick Facts

Early Life and Education

Myrna Colley-Lee was born in 1941 in Hamlet, North Carolina. She grew up at a time when a career in theatre design was not an easy or obvious path, and she built her skills step by step through study and early jobs in education and community work.

She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina. She later completed a master’s degree in scenic and costume design at Temple University in Philadelphia. That advanced training is a key fact in her story, because costume design at the level she later reached needs both art skill and deep knowledge of history, fabric, and character.

Before design became her full time work, she worked as an art supervisor in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system and also did social work. She also spent time in Liberia in West Africa. Reports on her life note that she caught malaria during that period. Those early years gave her a wide view of people and cultures, something that later showed in costumes that treated each character and each community with care and detail.

A Long Career in Costume Design

Colley-Lee began her design career in the late 1960s. Over the decades that followed, she designed costumes and scenic work for more than 70 productions, in more than 50 theatres and venues across the United States. It is a large body of work, built production by production rather than through film fame.

Her theatre credits include many of the most important plays in modern American writing. She designed for The Piano Lesson, Radio Golf, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, and Two Trains Running, all part of August Wilson’s famous cycle of plays about Black life in America. Her other noted productions include Wedding Band: A Love/Hate Story in Black and White, The Ballad of Emmett Till, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Gee’s Bend, Forest City, and Bus Stop.

She worked with well known companies such as the Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, the Cleveland Play House, and the St. Louis Repertory Theatre, among many others. Directors and theatres returned to her because her costumes helped tell the story. Good costume design does quiet work. It shows the period, the place, the money a character has or does not have, and the pride a character holds, all before a word is spoken.

Her work also reached film and television. Her screen credits include costume work for Frederick Douglass: An American Life in 1985, and she appeared as herself in connection with the long running news program 60 Minutes. Through her company GladRags Designs, she also took on art direction, set design, and later even interior design work, including a commercial interior for Revelations Entertainment, the production company linked to Freeman, and private homes.

She held teaching and staff roles as well, including at Smith College, at The Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival, and at the Design and Management Institute of the National Arts Consortium in New York. Teaching kept her tied to the next generation of designers, not only to her own productions.

Marriage to Morgan Freeman

Colley-Lee met Morgan Freeman through mutual connections in the theatre world in the 1970s. They married on June 16, 1984. Freeman’s acting career was still building at that time. His major film fame came later in the decade, and the couple’s long marriage covered the years in which he became one of the most respected actors in the world.

The couple made their main home away from Hollywood, in Tallahatchie County in northern Mississippi, near Charleston. It was a quiet and grounded life by celebrity standards, on land rather than on red carpets. Colley-Lee kept working in theatre during the marriage, traveling for productions while Mississippi stayed her base.

The couple did not have biological children together. Colley-Lee helped raise Freeman’s children from his earlier relationships, and together they raised his step-granddaughter E’Dena Hines. Hines was the granddaughter of Freeman’s first wife, Jeanette Adair Bradshaw. Colley-Lee is often described in reports as close to Freeman’s wider family during the marriage years. E’Dena Hines later pursued acting. Her death in 2015, years after the divorce, was a tragedy that was widely reported at the time, and it is not a subject for detail or speculation here.

During the marriage, Colley-Lee’s own public profile stayed low compared with her husband’s. She appeared at some events at his side but let her theatre record speak for itself. That low profile is one reason many film fans are surprised to learn how long and how strong her own career was.

Divorce and What Was Reported About the Settlement

After 26 years of marriage, the couple separated in December 2007. Divorce papers followed in 2008, and the divorce was finalized on September 15, 2010. Freeman’s attorney William R. Wright told the press at the time that it was done without a trial and that everybody was glad it was over.

The court documents were sealed, and the reasons for the split were never officially made public. Tabloid reports at the time offered claims and rumors, but none of those claims was established in court findings, and this article does not present them as fact.

The money side needs the same care. Many websites publish large figures for a settlement and for Colley-Lee’s net worth, with numbers that vary very widely from site to site. Because the settlement terms were sealed, those figures are published estimates, not confirmed amounts. It is fair to say the settlement was widely reported as substantial and included cash and real estate, which is normal reporting on a long marriage to a very successful actor. It is not possible to confirm an exact figure from the public court record, so any single net worth number should be read as an estimate only.

Arts Patron, Boards, and Honors

Alongside design, Colley-Lee built a second legacy as a patron and organizer. She served as a Commissioner for the Mississippi Arts Commission. She served on the boards of the Rock River Foundation, a philanthropic group for the arts, the Charleston Arts Revitalization Effort in her home area, and groups linked to the Mississippi Museum of Art, Mississippi State University’s Department of Art, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. She was also linked to the Black Theatre Network and co founded the Son-Edna Foundation, which highlighted African American writers.

Her own art collection became a public gift as well. In 2017, the exhibition Reflections: African American Life from the Myrna Colley-Lee Collection was shown at the Columbus Museum in Georgia, sharing works from her collection that reflect African American life and history. A permanent collection of her clothing and costumes is held by the Mississippi State University Library, which keeps her design work available for study.

The honors followed the work. She received an honorary Doctor of Creative Arts degree from Mississippi State University. She received the Outstanding Costume Design Award from the National Black Theatre Festival, the Wynona Lee Fletcher Award for Outstanding Achievement as a Designer from the Black Theatre Network, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, among others. In 2022, the State of Mississippi honored her again with the Governor’s Arts Award for Excellence in Costume Design and Arts Patron, recognized by a resolution of the Mississippi Legislature.

Where Is Myrna Colley-Lee Today?

Today Colley-Lee lives a private life, still based in Charleston, Mississippi, in Tallahatchie County, the home she kept through her marriage and after it. She did not remarry after the divorce, and she has not sought a public celebrity life of her own. Reports in recent years describe her as continuing to work through GladRags Designs and continuing her board and patron work for the arts in Mississippi.

She appears in the news now mainly when the arts world honors her, as it did in 2022, or when an exhibition shares her collection. That pattern fits the whole shape of her life. She was a working designer first, long before she was known as anyone’s wife, and she remains a working arts figure first today. For readers asking where she is now, the honest answer is also a respectful one. She is at home in Mississippi, still tied to the theatres, museums, and young artists she has supported for more than fifty years.

FAQs

What is Myrna Colley-Lee known for in her own career?

She is a costume designer with more than 70 productions to her name, including many August Wilson plays such as The Piano Lesson, Fences, and Radio Golf. She is also a major arts patron in Mississippi.

How long was Myrna Colley-Lee married to Morgan Freeman?

They married on June 16, 1984, separated in late 2007, and their divorce was finalized on September 15, 2010, after 26 years of marriage.

Did Myrna Colley-Lee and Morgan Freeman have children together?

They did not have biological children together. She helped raise his children from earlier relationships, and together they raised his step-granddaughter E’Dena Hines.

Where does Myrna Colley-Lee live now?

She lives in Charleston, in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, where she has long been based. She continues her links to arts groups and to her design company, GladRags Designs.

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Final Thoughts

Myrna Colley-Lee deserves to be remembered first for her own work. A master’s trained designer who dressed some of the most important plays in American theatre, a teacher, a collector, and a patron who gave time and money back to the arts in her home state, she built all of that across more than five decades.

Her marriage to Morgan Freeman is a real and long chapter of her life, and it is the reason many readers find her name. But it is not the whole book. Today, in Mississippi, her costumes sit in a university collection, her art has been shared in museum exhibitions, and her name sits on honors that have nothing to do with fame by marriage. That is a legacy she earned herself, one production at a time.

Featured photo: Myrna Colley-Lee (with Morgan Freeman) – photo by Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons