I was recently alerted to a human being on a social media platform expressing a lack of awareness about the relationship between Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson, and I just about fell out of my chair. I thought about this post, the one you’re reading right now, about Celebrity Lesbian Couples Time Forgot, which I’d written in 2013 and been asked repeatedly to update, and thought, my lord, what has time forgotten by now? The author of the above tweet eventually requested for everybody to stop dunking on them because they are only 19, which, fair. Then, just last week, someone commented on a picture of Leisha Hailey and kd lang kissing that they had no idea they’d ever dated. (Everybody knows about Angelina Jolie and Jenny Shimizu, right?) So I decided it was indeed time to update this post — to add new potentially forgotten couples, to remind you of the older ones, and to simply take a trip back in time because there is nothing I love more than taking a trip back in lesbian time through RESEARCH!

The inclusion of any human being on this list is not an endorsement of everything or even anything they have ever said or done. 

15 Lesbian Couples Time Forgot

1. Sarah Paulson and Cherry Jones

mid-late 2000s

(Photo by Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic)

Before Sarah Paulson entered a deeply celebrated May-December relationship with Holland Taylor, she was in a different May-December relationship — Paulson and actor Cherry Jones dated from 2004-2009. Paulson was 30 and Jones was 48 when they began their relationship, and a shot of Paulson kissing Jones at the Tony Awards in 2005 was the moment in which she became publicly known as a gay lady. Jones was initially best known as a legend of theater but recently has been doing heaps of television, including Transparent, Succession and Five Days at Memorial. Jones has been married to filmmaker Sophie Huber since 2015.

2. Ellen Degeneres and Alexandra Hedison

early-mid 2000s

(Photo by J. Vespa/WireImage)

Before she began engaging in knife-play with Helena Peabody and long before she married Jodie Foster, Alexandra Hedison engaged in loveplay with Ellen DeGeneres, who she met via mutual friends in 2000 after Ellen and Anne Heche broke up. Although she was a cast member of The L Word and played bit parts in Lois & Clark, Melrose Place, Nash Bridges and L.A. Firefighters; Hedison’s primary occupation is photography. She’s also directed an animated film, In the Dog House, and a documentary, The Making of Suit Yourself. Alexandra and Ellen lived together in Ellen’s Hollywood Hills home until December 2004, when the two split up, Heddison moved out, and a “source close to the couple” told The New York Daily News that “it’s difficult for both of them and very sad. They were a private couple, and they hope they can separate privately.”

3. Ione Skye and Jenny Shimizu

mid-90s

(Photo by Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage)

Bisexual actress Ione Skye (the son of singer-songwriter Donovan and model Enid Karl) (Best known for her role in Say Anything and most recently appearing in La Brea) met and befriended legendary model/actress Jenny Shimizu on the set of Quentin Tarantino’s movie Four Rooms in 1994. Skye’s marriage with Beastie Boy Adam Horowitz was in trouble (they’d divorce in 1999), and Skye said of the relationship with Jenny, “Of all Madonna’s friends, I liked Jenny Shimizu in particular. We went out together. We went to this lesbian club. There was dancing, lots of energy and beautiful girls. And it just happened.” She described Shimizu as “kind of boylike, kind of dykey” with “a great figure” and said that Shimizu eventually dumped her for another woman.

Shimizu famously also dated Angelina Jolie, whomst she met on the set of Foxfire, which filmed in 1995. But then, in September 1996, Shimizu was cited in a Curve Magazine feature as living in a Hollywood Hills house with her girlfriend “of two years,” Venezuelan model Maria Luisa Mosquera, so these timelines are really anybody’s guess. We’ll likely learn more from Skye’s upcoming memoir, Say Everything, which promises to dish on her affairs and infatuations with men like River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves and women like Jenny Shimizu, Ingrid Casares, and Alice Temple.

Shimizu is now married to Michelle Harper, and Skye is married to musician Ben Lee. Skye and Lee have two children.They also have a podcast, on which Skye has talked about all “the girls” she was fooling around with while married to Horovitz.

But, speaking of Madonna’s ’80s/’90s dykey entourage …

4. Patricia Velásquez and Sandra Bernhard

early 90s

Photo of Sandra Bernhard by Getty Images/Bob Riha, Jr.) // Photo of Patricia Velásquez via Shutterstock

Venezuelan model and actress Patricia Velásquez is best known for her print and runway work (she’s also been in several Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Editions) and her role as Anck-Su-Namun in The Mummy and The Mummy Returns. You may recognize her from Arrested Development, Liz in September and The L Word. But did you know that she dated outspoken bisexual comedienne Sandra Bernhard for two years in the early 90s? The two met at a Comme des Garcons fashion show in Paris. In her memoir Straight Walk, Velásquez confirmed that relationship and her lesbian identity, revealing that Sandra Bernhard was actually the first girl she kissed. “I was deeply in love with Sandra,” she wrote in her book, “in a way I’d never experienced before.”

By this point, Sandra Bernhard was already a gay icon and had that very close and definitely sexual relationship with Madonna that resulted in the most iconic David Letterman appearance of all time. Bernhard also dated aforementioned nightclub queen Ingrid Casares, who maybe also dated Madonna? It was wild.

Now, Patricia Velásquez is in a relationship with philanthropist Alison Lawton and Bernhard has been with her partner Sara Switzer for 20 years.

5. Raven-Symoné and AZMarie

early/mid 2010s

(Photo by Rick Diamond/Getty Images for Neuro Drinks)

Television legend Raven-Symoné and her wife, Miranda Maday, are now a well-known pair who co-host The Best Podcast Ever. But before Miranda there was AzMarie Livingston, a model who’d begun gracing the runway in 2009 but broke out into more modeling an acting work after appearing in America’s Next Top Model: British Invasion in 2012.  A tabloid published a story that Raven-Symoné and AzMarie were living together in 2012, and after Raven came out in 2013, she and Livingston began appearing in public together (the picture above is from Ludacris’s pool party). In 2015, she talked to People about binge-watching TV with Livingston, who was at that time on Empire. The two split in October 2015. Livingston continues to act, model and influence, and married Milan Ariel in 2022.

6. Portia De Rossi and Francesca Gregorini

early 2000s

Portia de Rossi (left) and Francesca Gregorini during Party Announcing the Partnership Between Fashion Designer Stella McCartney and Absolut at Chateau Marmont Hotel (Photo by Chris Weeks/FilmMagic)

Before Ellen, Portia De Rossi dated Francesca Gregorini, an Italian writer and directer and the daughter of Bond Girl Barbara Bach and businessman Augusto Gregorini and the stepdaughter of Ringo Starr. Gregorini directed Tanner Hall, starring Rooney Mara, as well as episodes of Killing Eve, Hulu’s The Dropout and Based on a True Story. Gregorini has been dating producer Morgan Marling (yes, Brit Marling’s sister) since 2014. And well, you know what Portia’s been up to.

7. Tracy Chapman and Alice Walker

mid-90s

photo of Walker: Photo by Francesco Da Vinci/Hulton Archive/Getty Images // photo of Chapman: Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

The two-year mid-90s romance between musician Tracy Chapman and author Alice Walker earned a new round of interest recently as Tracy Chapman re-entered mainstream consciousness after Luke Combs’ cover of Chapman’s 1988 legend “Fast Car” earned some Grammys and delivered unto us a live performance that truly unearthed a seismic wave of renewed adoration from the lesbian fanbase.

Walker spoke to The Guardian about the relationship in 2006, and then again in 2022, when talking to Gayle King about her memoir, “Gathering Blossoms Under Fire: The Journals of Alice Walker.” Walker described Chapman as one of the “great loves of her life” and told King she felt immediately attracted to Chapman because of her incredible voice.

The Root recently wrote that according to internet lore, Chapman allegedly actually dated Alice’s daughter, Rebecca Walker (from whom Alice has often been estranged, but is not currently), and that Alice (who is twenty years older than Chapman) stole Tracy from Alice, which would be absolutely bananas if true. Which brings us to…

8. Meshell Ndegeocello & Rebecca Walker

late 90s – early 2000s

(Photo of Meshell Ndegeocello by Raymond Boyd/Getty Images)

Writer and activist Rebecca Walker was in a long term relationship with bisexual singer Meshell Ndegeocello, a pairing which AfterEllen says was “for years… the most out couple in the black lesbian community.” They met because Meshell saw her picture in the paper, showed up at her reading, and that night asked Rebecca to write her liner notes.

Ndegeocello and Walker co-parented Ndgeocello’s son, Solomon, who was born in 1989, and Walker continued to help raise Solomon after their breakup, which is just one example of their generous approach to romance. In a Curve magazine interview in 2003, when asked if it was difficult to tour with an album written about Walker, Ndgeocello answered, “Not at all. I’d probably sing to her every night… [some] people, they love each other, and then they take the love away, and I’m not really like that. You know, it’s a continuous thing.” In her 2007 memoir, Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence, Walker wrote about her life with a stepson and her biological son from a feminist framework.

Ndegeocello now lives in Berlin, and has been married to Alison Riley, which whom she had a second son, since 2005. Walker has a son with Buddhist teacher Choyin Rangdrol Tenzin.

9. Sophie B Hawkins and Rosie O’Donnell

early/mid 90s

Featureflash Photo Agency / Shutterstock.com // Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Although rumors that the two were dating in 2015 were false and quickly debunked, Sophie B Hawkins (best known for “Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover”) and Rosie O’Donnell dated in the 90s. They met because Hawkins loved O’Donnell in A League Of Their Own and thus went to see her show at Caroline’s Comedy Club. At that point, they connected. After a period of post-relationship estrangement, they have now been close friends for decades. “You have profound loves in your life and I think for me, this was one of them,” Rosie said in the intro to (a really fantastic!) episode of her podcast “Onward,” which featured an interview with Sophie.

10. Leisha Hailey and KD Lang

mid-late 90s – 2000

Photo by Richard Corkery/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images

These two are like the ultimate “omg remember when ____” couple. Crooner k.d. Lang and beloved actor/musician Leisha Hailey, then a singer in The Murmurs, met at a friend’s birthday party in 1996 and broke up in 2000. Of their relationship, Hailey told The Advocate, “It’s a very private matter for me. I learned a tremendous amount from that relationship, and I’m very sentimental about it and look back on it with beautiful memories.” She says their lifestyle “was about being at home and being with our dog.”

Hailey is now in a relationship with actor Kim Dickens.

11. Linda Perry and Clementine Ford

late 2000s

(Photo by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)

Cybill Shepherd’s daughter, Clementine Ford, had a regular role on The Young and The Restless before she was cast to play Molly on The L Word, starting in Season Five. In May of 2009, Ford told Soap Opera Digest, “Every time I do an interview, she asks, ‘Did you mention me?’ We go to events together and we don’t try to hide anything. We’re just a couple. We’re both like, ‘I can’t wait to show you off.'” Linda Perry was the lead singer and songwriter for 4 Non Blondes, and is now a top songwriter, penning hits for artists like Pink, Christina Aguilera, Adele, Alicia Keys and James Blunt.

After Ford and Perry split, Ford began dating actor Sarah Gilbert (Roseanne, The Talk), whom she eventually married. They had a son in 2015 and broke up in 2019. In 2022, Ford wrote a piece for Business Insider about meeting and falling in love with her now-husband after years of dating only women.

12. Sheryl Swoopes and Alisa “Scotty” Scott

early/mid 2000s’

via Go Magazine

It’s hard to imagine a WNBA not teeming with queers and lesbian couples, but once upon a time, there were only three, and the third player and biggest name to come out was Sheryl Swoopes in 2005. Swoopes was a three-time league MVP considered then the greatest female player in the history of basketball. She was the first athlete to ever come out at the pinnacle of their career. When she came out, she revealed that she’d been dating Alisa “Scotty” Scott, former Houston Comets assistant coach, since 1998, and they were co-parenting her son, who she’d had with her ex-husband. Scott resigned from her position with the Comets in early 2005, but continued coaching. Swoopes and Scott broke up in 2011. Swoopes married Chris Unclesho in 2017.

13. Rita Mae Brown / Martina Navratilova / Judy Nelson Love Triangle

70s – 90s

Rita Mae Brown Photo by © Roger Ressmeyer/CORBIS/VCG via Getty Images // Martina Navitalova Photo by SSPL/Getty Images // Judy Nelson Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Rita Mae Brown, former activist and author of seminal lesbian novel Rubyfruit Jungle, not only dated Fried Green Tomatoes‘ author Fannie Flagg, but was involved in a really epic lesbian love triangle in the early 80s involving tennis legend and noted full-time TERF Martina Navratilova and beauty queen Judy Nelson. Brown got a horse farm in Charlottesville with Navratilova, with whom she lived from 1979-1981, a relationship which likely inspired her novel Sudden Death, about a lesbian tennis player.

Martina went on to famously and publicly date beauty queen and mother-of-two Judy Nelson, starting in 1983, and when the couple suffered a messy breakup in 1991, it was Rita Mae who mediated their palimony dispute — and who then moved in with Judy. Rita Mae wrote the intro to Judy’s book Love Match, which was about Judy’s affair with Martina and the two years she spent with Rita.

14. Cara Delevigne & Michelle Rodriguez

mid-2010s

(Photo by James Devaney/FilmMagic)

Model/actor Cara Delevingne and actor Michelle Rodriguez had a whirlwind romance that garnered a lot of traffic to this website when they began dating in late 2013, famously visiting a Big Cat Encounters Ranch in Nevada, getting injected with vitamins intravenously while holding hands, hiding from paparazzi in animal onesies, and vaping at a Knicks/Pistons game. By the end of 2014, the two had split, and by 2015, Cara was happily dating Annie Clark from St. Vincent. In 2018 she got serious with Ashley Benson, a relationship that ended a few years later. She’s now been with her girlfriend, musical artist Minke (real name Leah Mason) for over two years. Michelle Rodriguez‘s relationship status is a mystery.

15. Tila Tequila / Courtenay Semel / Casey Johnson Love Triangle

late 2000s 

Courtenay + Tila, October 2008, by Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic // Casey + Courtenay, May 2009, by Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic // Casey + Tila, December 2009, by Michael Kovac/FilmMagic

The mid-to-late 2000s were a transformational time for the celebrity gossip industry —magazines like US Weekly had recently peaked and now blogs were taking over, increasing the speed at which gossip traveled and widening the scope of people who felt inclined to report on it. (This era is explored really deftly in Zackary Drucker’s documentary Queenmaker.) Twitter was brand new but was already making waves for its ability to give celebrities direct access to the public, but Instagram had yet to catch on, meaning celebs were still often at Perez Hilton’s mercy. A lot of gossip blogs at the time were focused on a specific sect of girls who were “famous for being famous,” with “it girls” like Paris Hilton edging into the spotlight alongside actors and pop stars like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

On the periphery of so much socialite gossip was Courtenay Semel, Lindsay Lohan‘s best friend and the daughter of former Yahoo! CEO Terry Semel, who described herself in a 2009 Curve Magazine cover story as the “lesbian Don Juan.” Semel, who often hung out with the Kardashians and the Hiltons, was openly dating and kissing Tila Tequila on red carpets and at events for many months of 2008, attracting some press attention.

Tila was, at that time, known for being the most popular girl on MySpace and for appearing in a lot of lad mags, as well as for her 2007-2008 MTV reality show show, A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila. (Tila Tequila’s whole deal has since um, taken a severe and alarming political turn.) After dating Tila, Courtenay got back together with Johnson & Johnson heiress Casey Johnson, who Semel told Curve was the love of her life. Tragically, Casey Johnson died in January of 2010 from diabetic ketoacidosis, devastating friends including Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson. At the time, Johnson was living with and engaged to Tila Tequila.

Courtenay told Curve in 2013 that Johnson’s death was a wake-up call to change her life. She became a marriage and family therapist and now appears to be a film producer.

16. Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson

late 2000s/early 2010s

Photo by Jeff Vespa/WireImage

Finally — as devastating as it was to learn that for some, time has forgotten this legendary pairing, I also relish the opportunity to bestow this intergenerational knowledge. It was unprecedented for a young actress at the peak of her career like Lindsay Lohan to openly be in a very public relationship with another woman, and the gossip mags had no idea what to do with themselves. DJ Samantha Ronson, who hails from a very wealthy family and is the sibling of producer Mark Ronson and designer Charlotte Ronson, was openly gay, and eventually, Lohan was open about being in a relationship with Sam, which was best characterized as “on-again, off-again.” It was a shock for Ronson, who’d never experienced this level of paparazzi attention.

I’d never cared about celebrity gossip for one second of my life until these two came along, and Autostraddle spent a rational amount of time devoted to activities like analyzing Samantha Ronson’s tweets. Skepticism about the match was also very of-its-time, with Intelligencer referring to the Johnson-Semel-Tequila love triangle and Lindsay Lohan’s relationship with Samantha Ronson as women “performing for the public gaze” for whom “adopting the lesbian pose is as easy a career move as grabbing a bottle of peroxide.”

Samantha has been dating beauty mogul Cassandra Grey since 2017. Lindsay Lohan and financier Bader Shammas married in 2022.

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