Lenny Kravitz is someone the world looks to for effortless style, so when a new video dropped on Architectural Digest‘s YouTube channel featuring his Paris home, the expectations were high. And they were fulfilled, as Kravitz showed off his residence in the city’s 16th arrondissement. Now 60, Kravitz has owned the house for decades. He says he fell in love with the city after first coming to Paris to promote his debut album Let Love Rule in 1989.
But the palatial mansion is also special to Kravitz because it was his mother’s dream to live in Paris, a dream that wasn’t realized in her lifetime. Kravitz’s mother, Roxie Roxer, died of breast cancer in 1995 at the age of 66. She was an actress best known as Helen Willis on the classic sitcom The Jeffersons, where she was part of TV’s first interracial marriage. In real life, she was married to Lenny’s father, TV executive Sy Kravitz, who was also white.
“This place is called Hôtel de Roxie. It’s named after my mother, because it was her dream to come live in Paris,” Kravitz told AD. “She wanted to retire after doing 11 seasons on The Jeffersons, and she never got to do it.”
This is Lenny’s second time on AD’s “Open Door” series, featuring celebs showing off their fabulous homes. Hamilton actor Daveed Diggs and his partner Emmy Raver Lampman earned millions of views with their eclectic L.A. home, and Viola Davis and Julian Tennon showed off their traditional but cozy place. Kravitz, who owns real estate in New York, Miami, Paris, Los Angeles, the Bahamas and Brazil, let AD record him at his farm in Brazil in his last video.
His Paris home was once owned by Countess Anne d’Ornano who, once widowed, spent more time at her estate in suburban France, so she decided to sell. Kravitz says he was looking for more of a pied á terre at the time (a bachelor pad, basically) but fell in love with the place when a savvy realtor told him it was something he had to see.
Once married to Lisa Bonet with whom he has a daughter, actress Zoe Kravitz, he’s rarely been in a public relationship and hasn’t remarried or had any other children. He remains good friends with Bonet, who split from her longtime partner, Jason Momoa, back in 2022. (The couple were officially divorced last year.)
Kravitz dedicated the petit salon, or sitting room, to Roker, with several pictures of her prominently displayed there. He calls it The Roxie Room.
“She was the love of my life. I was a momma’s boy,” he says proudly. “I found a bunch of photos that my father had taken of my mother in the late ’60s and got them framed by the same framer that does a lot of framing for the Louvre. I just wanted to have a room where I was surrounded by her image.”
His design studio – because of course, he has one – designed a chandelier named after Roker that hangs in the great room.
His Paris spot also acknowledges his entire family with images of them throughout the space.
“This house continually pays tribute to my ancestors and as you’ll see as we walk through the house, there’s photographs of them everywhere. All of this photography tells a story throughout the house through Black history, American and African,” Kravitz told AD.
Other highlights include a wood and bronze piano with African carvings he designed with famed piano manufacturer Steinway, and recording studio and club in the basement. Watch the entire video below: