Sarah Ferguson may still be the Duchess of York, but her net worth is anything but royal. Ferguson, whose strange relationship with Prince Andrew made her a household name worldwide, hasn’t been a member of the British royal family since her 1996 divorce — even though she retained her title. But having a title hasn’t guaranteed financial stability. Even though she remained a public figure, Fergie has had to hustle to make ends meet ever since. And her newest diaper venture suggests things haven’t been easy for the former royal.

While Princess Diana received millions in her divorce from then-Prince Charles, Ferguson walked away with pocket change by comparison. The discrepancy was not lost on her. In a 2010 recording, she told an undercover tabloid reporter that she got nothing in her divorce settlement. That’s not exactly true. Ferguson received the equivalent of about £500,000 to purchase a house and another £350,000 in cash, The Telegraph reported.  While not “zero,” as she claimed, Ferguson’s settlement really is peanuts by royal standards.

To make matters worse, she made a series of business decisions that left her in a dire financial situation. Her desperation reached extreme heights in 2010, when she offered the undercover News of the World reporter, posing as a businessman, access to Andrew for £500,000. “I have the biggest heart and the biggest of everything. But I have zero money. I have nothing,” she told him, according to the Daily Mail). The fact that she is now selling diapers is probably not a great sign for her financial health.

Even though she hasn’t raised babies in decades, Sarah Ferguson is still concerned about the environmental impact of disposable diapers. In 2024, the Duchess of York partnered with Kim and Jason Graham-Nye to create the Greater Good Diaper Project, an initiative that produces compostable diapers in Samoa, an island country in the South Pacific Ocean that struggles with significant plastic pollution. “I’ve created an eco-friendly nappy,” she told the Daily Mail in August 2025.

Ferguson’s role as grandmother to Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie’s children served as inspiration for her involvement in the venture. “I think it’s very exciting, being a grandmother, because the more grandchildren I have, the more urgency there is for compostable diapers,” she shared. Ferguson hopes she and her partners will ultimately expand this project beyond Samoa’s borders. “My hope is that it will end with governments, businesses, and societies working together around the world to make compostable nappies a reality,” she captioned an Instagram post.

This isn’t the first time Fergie has tried her hand in the business world, though. In 2009, her media company, Hartmoor, shut down amid debts of more than $1 million. “This was clearly a distressed company and when the company failed it had significant debts,” a source told The Telegraph. The following year, when her debts had climbed to nearly £5 million, she came close to declaring personal bankruptcy, which would’ve made her the first royal to do so, The Guardian reported. Hopefully, the compostable diapers will prove to be a more fruitful investment.