Spencer Margaret Richmond: Everything to Know About Jaclyn Smith's Daughter

Spencer Margaret Richmond is the daughter of Jaclyn Smith, the Charlie’s Angels star who became one of the most successful celebrity businesswomen in America, and of Anthony B. Richmond, the British cinematographer who won a BAFTA for his work. Born in Los Angeles in 1985, she grew up beside fame but chose a life mostly away from it.

What is documented about her is a family story more than a celebrity one: an older brother in the camera department, a godmother who was also an Angel, a move into fashion design beside her mother, a marriage to actor Fran Kranz that ended in 2021, and two daughters who made Jaclyn Smith a grandmother. This article keeps to that public record.

Quick Facts

Born to an Angel and a Cinematographer

Spencer Margaret Richmond was born on December 4, 1985, in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Jaclyn Smith, had become a household name playing Kelly Garrett on Charlie’s Angels, the hit series that ran from 1976 to 1981, and was already building the clothing and home business that would define her second career.

Her father, Anthony B. Richmond, worked on the other side of the camera. The British cinematographer shot films including Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth and won the BAFTA award for best cinematography in the early 1970s. He and Smith met while filming Nightkill in 1980 and married in 1981, keeping the wedding small, with a handful of friends and their dogs in attendance.

Spencer was their second child. Her older brother Gaston was born in 1982, and her godmother is Kate Jackson, her mother’s fellow original Angel. In 1989 her parents divorced. Her mother later married heart surgeon Dr. Brad Allen in 1997, and Spencer grew up mainly in Los Angeles inside a family that stayed close across those changes.

Growing Up Close to Her Mother

Public glimpses of Spencer’s younger years are rare, which appears to have been the family’s intention. She did not pursue childhood acting, and no public record of her schooling has been widely reported. What does show, across decades of interviews and photographs, is an unusually close bond between mother and daughter.

Smith often shares family moments with Spencer and Gaston, and has described this period of her life, being a mother while her career was at full height, as the best time of it. In 2015 mother and daughter modeled together to promote Jaclyn’s clothing collection, an early sign of the working partnership that would follow two years later.

That closeness later survived the normal tests. Spencer’s parents’ divorce, her mother’s remarriage, and the family’s life between Los Angeles and her father’s British roots all sit in the background of the record. The foreground, in every public account, is a daughter who stayed near her mother by choice rather than by publicity.

Fashion Work and Spencer by Jaclyn Smith

Spencer’s documented career is in design. Her mother pioneered the celebrity clothing line model with her long running collections, and Spencer joined that family business as a co-designer, bringing a younger mother’s eye to a brand built for everyday shoppers.

In 2017 the two launched Spencer by Jaclyn Smith, a baby and layette collection. The timing was personal: Spencer’s first daughter, Bea, was born in that period, making Jaclyn Smith a grandmother for the first time. In the launch announcement Spencer spoke as a new mother about what parents actually need: affordable, durable and very soft basics for babies.

The line remains her clearest professional credit in public sources. Some profiles describe her net worth at around 1 million dollars, but that figure is an unsourced estimate and should be read as such. What is documented is the work itself: a mother and daughter turning a real family moment, a first grandchild, into a product line built from their own experience.

Marriage to Fran Kranz and Motherhood

In 2015 Spencer married actor and director Fran Kranz, known for roles in The Cabin in the Woods and the Joss Whedon series Dollhouse, and for his later work as a filmmaker. The couple kept their life together largely private, in line with Spencer’s lifelong pattern.

They had two daughters: Bea, born in September 2016, and Olivia Rose, born in 2019. Their arrival gave Jaclyn Smith the grandmother role she speaks about with obvious joy, and holiday photographs of Smith with Bea have been shared by the family in recent years.

Spencer filed for divorce in June 2020, and the divorce was finalized on February 4, 2021. No public dispute followed, and she returned to the pattern of her whole life: attention on her children and her family, and almost none on herself. Profiles sometimes differ on small family details, a sign of how little verified information she has ever released.

Life Today, Kept Deliberately Quiet

Spencer Margaret Richmond, now in her forties, continues to live a private life in California, connected publicly mainly through her mother’s occasional family posts and the design work they did together. She has no public career as an actress and no personal brand built on her famous surname.

Her brother Gaston followed their father into the camera department, working on film and television productions behind the scenes. The pattern across both children is striking: raised by two people who were famous for being seen, both chose trades where the work is seen and the worker mostly is not.

For readers who meet her through Charlie’s Angels nostalgia, the honest picture is this: a designer, a mother of two, a close daughter and sister, and a woman who tested public life only on her own terms, beside her mother, with a baby line named after herself and built for her own daughter.

Her mother’s career gives Spencer’s quiet choices an extra meaning, because Jaclyn Smith is famous not only for a television series but for refusing to let that series be the whole story. Smith built a business empire from clothing and home lines long before celebrity brands were common, and she did it by attaching her name carefully, to products she actually helped design for ordinary shoppers. Spencer’s one public business step follows that family method exactly. She did not lend her name to a launch; she co-designed a baby line at the moment she became a mother, inside her mother’s existing company, aimed at the same practical shoppers. Read that way, her record is less mysterious than it first looks. She was raised by a woman who treated fame as a tool to be used sparingly and well, and by a father whose art happens behind a camera. A daughter who appears in public mainly to design baby clothes beside her mother, and otherwise lives privately with her two girls, is not hiding from that inheritance. She is using it precisely as she was taught to use it.

FAQs

Who is Spencer Margaret Richmond?

She is the daughter of actress Jaclyn Smith and cinematographer Anthony B. Richmond, born in Los Angeles on December 4, 1985. She works as a fashion designer.

What is Spencer Margaret Richmond known for?

She is known for co-designing the Spencer by Jaclyn Smith baby collection with her mother in 2017, launched after the birth of her daughter Bea.

Was Spencer Margaret Richmond married?

Yes. She married actor Fran Kranz in 2015. They have two daughters, Bea and Olivia Rose, and their divorce was finalized in February 2021.

Who is Spencer Margaret Richmond’s brother?

Her older brother is Gaston Richmond, born in 1982, who works in the camera department in film and television, following their father’s profession.

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Final Thoughts

Spencer Margaret Richmond’s public story is small because she wanted it that way. The facts that exist, her famous parents, her design work with her mother, her two daughters, show a life built at one remove from the spotlight.

In a family whose name was made on camera, she found her place beside it rather than in front of it, and that choice has held for forty years.

Featured photo: Jaclyn Smith – photo by m j c, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons