Where Are Marilyn Monroe’s Engagement Rings Now?

The world will forever be fascinated by Marilyn Monroe. A sex symbol, fashion icon, and leading actress of the 1950s, her story is both a glamorous and impossibly sad one—which is probably why we can’t stop poring over her life, from her most famous roles to her decidedly salacious (and short-lived) marriages. Monroe married (and divorced) three men over her lifetime—high school sweetheart James Dougherty, baseball player Joe DiMaggio, and playwright Arthur Miller—and supposedly received a wedding ring from each one. Much like the woman who wore them, these rings come with plenty of mysteries, a few of which we were determined to solve.

Monroe’s platinum diamond eternity band from DiMaggio is arguably her most famous engagement ring, and the one that is the easiest to track. Technically, the baguette-cut bauble, complete with 36 stones, wasn’t a true proposal piece; the New York Yankees player asked Monroe to marry him spontaneously while visiting family in San Francisco, without a ring. When they eloped at San Francisco City Hall a few days later (what was supposed to be a secret six-person ceremony turned chaotic when the pair’s nuptials were leaked to the press), he reportedly slipped the famous band on her finger when the judge pronounced them husband and wife. 

According to The Adventurine, however, there’s another working theory about the ring; after closely inspecting photos from the couple’s January 14, 1954, nuptials, collector Scott Fortner, the founder of the Marilyn Monroe Collection, believed that DiMaggio actually sealed the deal with a vintage-looking piece with a small cluster of stones—and that the accessory had been borrowed from family due to the hasty nature of their wedding. This tracks, considering the fact that this piece was never seen again (and if you zoom in close on images from their wedding day, the ring does look a little different). The lore is that DiMaggio purchased the eternity band in the days after the wedding—and the whereabouts of that original heirloom ring are completely unknown.

As for the eternity band? The piece was ultimately auctioned off by Christie’s in 1999, as part of the “The Personal Property of Marilyn Monroe” sale. The ring came to market one diamond short; even still, it pulled in $772,500, which far surpassed the initial appraisal of $50,000. It was reportedly later auctioned off again by Profiles in History, per The Marilyn Report, where it sold for a lower price of $516,000. Both buyers (and the ring’s current location) were never revealed. 

Though the eternity band from DiMaggio was by far her most famous ring, we know a bit about the band she received from Miller, her third and final husband. Similarly to DiMaggio, it isn’t believed that Miller actually proposed with a diamond—and he also gave her an heirloom “placeholder” ring, asserts The Marilyn Report. He married Monroe in New York in 1956 with a 22-karat gold band that he’d borrowed from his mother, Augusta; allegedly, the Cartier piece he’d ordered hadn’t arrived in time. 

Very little is known, however, about Monroe's very first engagement ring from Dougherty, her high school sweetheart. It’s possible that it never existed: Monroe married the police officer when she was just 16 (she was still known as Norma Jean Baker at the time), so it’s likely that they exchanged simple bands and nothing more. The pair divorced in 1946, after Monroe signed a modeling contract that required her to be unmarried.