I was a broke single mum before building £500m empire…now I’ve bought a CASTLE but it came with a heart-rending problem

WHEN Dr Ann Kaplan Mulholland bought a castle for £5.5 million, she had no idea she’d be taking on 33 angry brides who’d had their weddings cancelled by the previous owners.

But that’s exactly what happened to Ann, 63, when she and her husband Stephen, 63, bought , in Kent, in February 2023.

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“They were all emailing me immediately,” the former Real Housewives of Toronto star tells us. “I had to create a new business for the castle overnight and ensure their weddings went ahead.

“I didn’t know I’d be taking on a whole business when I took on the property!”

First erected in the 1080s, Lympne Castle was the residence of the Archdeacon of Canterbury until 1860, and it has stunning views looking out over the Kent countryside, and as far out as Calais, France. 

The 139-acre castle is just one of 11 properties Ann and her plastic surgeon husband Stephen own all over the world, including three homes in Hawaii, five in Canada and a 17,000 sq ft penthouse in Las Vegas, which cost $18 million, and has a 360-degree view of the Las Vegas Strip.

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She says: “Some people collect things. We collect pieces of art and the pieces of art are our houses. So every property is unique and beautiful.”

And while Ann, today, is swanning around in a sparkly, diamond tiara, 23-carat engagement ring, custom-made ballgown and Schiaparelli shoes worth almost £4,000, it was a completely different story just over 30 years ago.

When she was 30 years old, Ann became a broke, single mum-of-two, after her first husband - who she refers to as “Gone With The Wind” - left her in Toronto, with their two children, then 21 months and nine months old.

She then single-handedly built up her medical loans business iFinance, which grew to become one of the biggest of its kind – and today she is worth a cool £500 million after selling it in 2022.

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Private island breaks

Ann met her second husband Stephen through her career, and ended up having two more children with him, as well as taking his two older children from a previous relationship on as her own.

“We ended up with a merger, acquisition and start-up,” she laughs. “And that was hectic, raising six children together.”

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For their own privacy, Ann won’t name her children, however they range from the ages of 35 to 20.

Far from her previous life, the couple sent all six of their children through £25,000-a-year private education and are now able to spend thousands flying first class and enjoy holidays on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island, at a cost of around £2,000 to £3,000 a night, as well as the Brando in Tahiti, at around £3,000 a night. 

It was the day after Ann and Stephen dropped their youngest - who she jokes is “her favourite” - off at university that the couple decided to take up residency in the UK.

She says: “I started to look for an apartment in London, and it was £8.5 million plus £4,000 a month just for the maintenance fees in the centre. I couldn’t figure this out.

Some people collect things. We collect pieces of art and the pieces of art are our houses so every property is unique and beautiful

Dr Ann Kaplan Mulholland

“I said to my husband, ‘We are not buying a place in England. There is no way we're investing in England, we're not spending that kind of money. The mortgages, the interest rate, inflation. No way.’”

The couple signed a lease on a flat in Kensington but Ann started to realise the further out of London you look, the more house you can get for your money - and she wondered what a castle would cost.

She found Lympne Castle for sale, but was told it was already under offer for £11 million. Six weeks later, in February last year, Ann discovered the deal fell through.

“My husband said, ‘We're not buying a castle!’ Anyway, the next day we looked at this castle and it was a mess. An absolute mess. Lympne Castle had not been looked after. 

“And I put an offer in that night for half the amount the last person offered and it was ours!”

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Reality show

Lympne Castle - where Mick Jagger once reportedly threw a huge party and Sir Paul McCartney recorded with Wings in 1978 - has been developed many times over the centuries. 

Between 1906 and 1908 the Scottish architect Sir Robert Lorimer was commissioned to restore and extend the property, adding the west wing.

And now, Ann is doing her own renovations throughout the castle, which she’s currently filming for an upcoming Escape To The Chateau-style TV show.

I was hand to mouth raising the kids, and you just do what you have to do

Dr Ann Kaplan Mulholland

Throughout the castle, there are many dilapidated rooms waiting to be brought back to life - and loads of walls Ann is hoping to knock through.

“There’s just so much red tape when it’s a listed building like this,” she groans.

The castle is now open to the public for free - and there are three restaurants throughout the grounds, filled with antique furniture that Ann has been having lots of fun bidding online for.

Ann - who has a degree in interior design - is keen for the castle to keep its traditional old-style feel.

“We’re not trying to modernise it,” she insists.

This is quite clear as she takes us upstairs to the part of the castle she’s hoping to open as a hotel next summer, and shows us a bathroom she’s hoping to bring back to its original state.

“The ceiling is going to be painted by a woman from Ukraine, who’s an incredible artist and has painted ceilings in the White House,” Ann says.

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Desperate tears

It was interior design that helped Ann get back on her feet when her first husband left her to fend for herself and two babies.

She rented out a room in an apartment, and took a job as an interior designer in commercial design, overseeing the job sites at night.

“That way, I could look after the kids during the day, drop them off at kindergarten, put them to bed and go to work, while someone looked after them at night,” she says.

“I was hand to mouth raising the kids, and you just do what you have to do.”

Ann had her breakthrough moment as she was leaning over the bathtub, washing her kids.

She recalls: “I just started crying because I always cried. And the kids started crying and then I realised that my attitude was being reflected on those two little kids.

“So I thought, ‘I'm not going to be that sad mum. He might have left and might be gone but he's not going to get that part of me. I was a happy person and I'm going to stay a happy person. I'm a single mum, I'm going to be a good single mum. And I'm going to be happy.’

“That moment was like you could draw a line in the sand.”

At that point, Canada was going from a medical system that provided free healthcare to all to a two-tiered system and Ann quickly realised people would need to start taking loans out to fund medical procedures.

Believing she’d be laughed out of the room as a woman, Ann employed the help of a “grey-haired man”, who went with her to numerous meetings with banks to help fund her company iFinance at the start.

She said: “I never said I was a single mum, and I was still turned down 32 or 33 times before I went into the Bank of Montreal, which is one of the largest banks in Canada, if not the largest.”

Ann got her first $5 (£2.8m) million from the Bank of Montreal and then raised a further $140 million (£79million) from various other loans.

“And it just went on from there and I just kept turning money over and built the business,” she recalls. “It was like running down a hill with a snowball. You're accumulating and you're running in front of it, and so that company grew and grew.”

iFinance became an international company and Ann stayed behind the scenes, doing the school run, and never telling anyone she was a single mum.

She also went back to school to do an MBA, as well as a Masters of Science degree, a doctorate in finance and corporate governance degree. 

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She says: “I ended up with five degrees while raising the kids, and you just do what you have to do.

“I never watched TV. I didn’t go to the movies, I  didn't have much downtime. I'd have one book a year I'd read. That would be my treat at Christmas time. And I just worked.”

iFinance became the biggest non-asset-based consumer finance company in Canada. The business provided around $2bn (£1.3bn) of consumer loans for private medical procedures - and Ann eventually sold the business in 2022.

But Ann insists she still feels a need to watch “every single dime,” in case she ever ends up back where she was all those years ago. 

She says: “As we were raising them, my husband and I were building our businesses, so we were really tight with our money. We watched everything.

“I still watch every single dime. I can't walk by a pence on the ground without picking it up. I think about how much every single thing costs.

“When I started earning money, I didn't spend anything and still lived off my salary.

“I still do try to live off my salary in my personal expenditures, so it's important to me to realise that I need to live a certain way in order to be a bit realistic and to be careful because I don't want to end up in a position where I'm that scared again.” 

She also says all her kids are “very respectful” with their money, and aren’t spoilt.

She says: “We didn’t throw things at the kids but obviously we have more means than most people do and they're aware of that. 

“I think they're a little bit shy of what they would call our ostentatious, extravagant show of wealth - I don't know why!”

In fact, while Ann admits she’s been known to walk into Balmain and buy a £30,000 jacket “without thinking about it,” her daughter has no designer clothes and lives in a tent she built herself.

“I seriously want to get a DNA test,” she laughs. “She refuses to take anything - I don't know what's wrong with her, I think someone switched her at birth!”

She adds: “When she was younger, she wanted an American Girl doll, which was  about $100 (£57). 

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“I said 'We're not buying you a doll like that. You're gonna have to earn it' and I had a list of chores and she was paid for every action on that list.

“It took her a couple months but she earned the money to buy the doll. And she has never ever thought of anything other than she's going to work for everything she gets.”