Fabiana Pimentel Owens: The Woman Behind the Headline
When ABC announced Mel Owens as the star of The Golden Bachelor Season 2, fans immediately had one question that had nothing to do with roses or rose ceremonies.
Who was the woman he was married to for 25 years?
That woman is Fabiana Pimentel Owens. And once you learn her story, you realize she’s far more interesting than just being someone’s ex-wife.
Let’s start from the beginning.
Quick Bio Facts
| Detail | Info |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Fabiana Maria Pimentel Owens |
| Birth Year | 1978 |
| Birthplace | Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Current Residence | Corona del Mar, California |
| Education | Business degree – Faculdade da Cidade, Brazil; Master’s in Marketing – UCLA |
| Former Spouse | Mel Owens (NFL linebacker, attorney) |
| Date of Marriage | May 17, 2002 |
| Divorce Filed | February 2020 |
| Divorce Finalized | December 2024 |
| Children | Lucas Owens (b. 2005), Andre Owens (b. 2007) |
| Age Gap with Mel | 19 years (she is younger) |
| Current Career | Director of Experiences, Preferred Hotels & Resorts |
| Former Business | Co-founder, Final Touch Organizing (2020–2023) |
| Interests | Reiki, ThetaHealing, crystals, travel, photography, baseball |
| Social Media | Uses name “Fabiana Pimentel Owens” (Instagram now private) |
A Girl From Rio Who Built a Life in California
Fabiana Pimentel Owens was born in 1978 in Rio de Janeiro — one of the most vibrant cities in the world. Growing up there shaped her. Brazil has a warmth and energy that tends to stay with people no matter where they go.
She wasn’t planning to spend her life in California. But life doesn’t always follow the map you drew for it.
At some point in her twenties, she made the move to the United States. She has spent over two decades in Southern California, building a career, raising two boys, and carving out a life that is entirely her own.
She isn’t a celebrity. She didn’t choose the spotlight. But when her ex-husband walked onto a reality TV dating show at age 66, the spotlight found her anyway.
Fabiana Pimentel Owens Education — Serious and Self-Made
Before any of the marriage and divorce talk, there’s something worth knowing about Fabiana Pimentel Owens: the woman worked hard for her education.
She started in Brazil, earning a business degree from Faculdade da Cidade. That alone took dedication. But she didn’t stop there.
After relocating to the United States, she went back to school and earned a master’s degree in marketing from UCLA. That is not a small thing. UCLA is one of the top universities in the country. Getting a graduate degree there as an immigrant navigating a new country shows real focus.
She came to California with skills. She added more. That’s the foundation everything else was built on.
How Fabiana Pimentel Owens Met Mel Owens
Mel Owens is not a quiet person to be near. He spent nine years as a linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams between 1981 and 1989. After football, he became an attorney — a founding partner at the firm Namanny, Byrne & Owens in Orange County.
By the time he and Fabiana Pimentel Owens met, he was already an established name in Southern California. She was 19 years younger.
Mel has called her his “first love” — which is a meaningful thing to say about someone you married well into your thirties. The exact story of how they met has never been fully told publicly. But what we know is that their connection was genuine enough that they built nearly a quarter century together.
They married on May 17, 2002. Fabiana was 24. Mel was 43.
Life During the Marriage
They settled into life in Orange County — specifically in Laguna Niguel, California. It was a quiet suburban life for two people who both had professional drive.
For the first several years after the wedding, Fabiana Pimentel Owens focused largely on family. But she stayed connected to Mel’s professional world too.
Starting in 2007, she worked as an assistant manager at NBO Law — the firm Mel had helped found. She held that role for nine years, until 2016. So she wasn’t just sitting at home. She was involved, capable, and working alongside her husband’s own professional life.
In 2005, their first son Lucas arrived. In 2007, Andre was born.
Two boys. A firm. A family home. On the surface, things looked solid.
Two Boys Who Love Baseball
Lucas and Andre Owens are two of Fabiana’s proudest achievements, and she will tell you that without hesitation.
Both boys grew up playing baseball. Both of them are good enough to play at the college level. Lucas graduated from Santa Margarita Catholic High School in 2025 with hopes of playing at the University of Michigan — his father’s alma mater. Andre, a senior at the same school, has already committed to play baseball at Oklahoma State University.
Fabiana Pimentel Owens describes herself as a devoted baseball mom. Watch her social media (when it was public) and you’d see that loud and clear. She’s present. She shows up. She cheers.
Even through the long, complicated divorce, raising these boys together with Mel seems to have remained the one area they stayed aligned on. They agreed to joint custody when the papers were filed. By most accounts, they have stayed co-parents without making the boys pay for the adult conflict.
That matters. A lot.
February 2020 — She Filed for Divorce
After 18 years of marriage, something broke.
On February 27, 2020, Fabiana Pimentel Owens filed for divorce in Orange County, California. The papers listed irreconcilable differences — the legal language that courts use when neither party wants to go into the real details on paper.
But Mel was more candid. In an interview with Us Weekly in 2025, he said that Fabiana had fallen in love with someone else. He didn’t say it with anger. He said it with the quiet sadness of someone who still doesn’t entirely understand where things went wrong.
“It’s never good, right?” he said. “But I’m never going to get in the way of someone’s happiness. It hurts — but I can’t get in the way of your happiness.”
That’s a graceful thing to say. And it suggests that whatever the real cause of the marriage’s end, Mel at least understood it couldn’t be fixed.
A Five-Year Legal Battle
Here’s what most people don’t know: the divorce wasn’t over quickly.
Fabiana Pimentel Owens filed in February 2020. The divorce wasn’t finalized until December 2024. That is nearly five years of legal proceedings — which is a long time by any measure.
Court documents obtained by Us Weekly revealed some significant numbers. Mel was ordered to pay Fabiana approximately $980,000. That figure covered a range of things: unpaid child and spousal support that had built up over time, future support obligations, division of property and debts, a court-imposed financial penalty against Mel, and a contribution toward Fabiana’s legal costs.
In exchange, Fabiana waived ongoing alimony. She walked away from monthly support payments in favor of the lump sum.
Mel kept the family home in Orange County — a property valued at over $2 million. He also retained other assets. The total value he held onto was reported at over $2.75 million.
Was it fair? Settlements rarely feel fully fair to anyone. But it was final.
Fabiana Pimentel Owens Didn’t Wait to Rebuild
Here’s what defines Fabiana’s character more than anything else in this story.
The same month she filed for divorce — April 2020 — she launched a business.
That timing is remarkable. Most people fall apart during divorce. Fabiana started something new.
She and her friend Karine Schaefer, a fellow Brazilian entrepreneur, co-founded Final Touch Organizing. The company offered professional home and office organization, but with a twist. Fabiana brought her background in Feng Shui into the work. The idea was that organizing a physical space wasn’t just about tidiness — it was about energy, flow, and harmony.
In a 2021 interview with Shout Out SoCal, she explained the philosophy herself. She talked about how their approach was different because it was holistic. She used Feng Shui to create balance between clients and their surroundings. She believed that when your space feels right, your stress level drops.
It was personal. It was something she genuinely believed in. And it worked — the business ran until 2023.
From Home Organization to Hotel Experiences
In May 2023, Fabiana Pimentel Owens stepped into a new chapter professionally.
She joined Preferred Hotels & Resorts — an international luxury hotel group — as their Director of Experiences. She works out of their Corona del Mar office in California.
It’s a natural fit. She has a master’s in marketing from UCLA. She has years of experience working in a professional environment. She has built and run her own business. And she has a personality that people describe as warm, engaged, and international in its outlook.
She went from homemaker to entrepreneur to corporate director in the space of a few years. That arc doesn’t happen without real determination.
She still uses the last name Owens professionally — both on LinkedIn and on social media. Whether that’s practical, sentimental, or simply because it’s the name her boys carry, only she knows.
The Wellness Side of Fabiana Pimentel Owens
Something about Fabiana’s story that gets overlooked in most coverage is the depth of her spiritual and wellness life.
She is a certified Reiki practitioner. Reiki is a Japanese energy healing practice that works with the body’s natural energy field. She is also a trained ThetaHealing practitioner — a meditative technique focused on subconscious belief work and emotional healing.
These aren’t passing interests. She studied them seriously and incorporated them into her professional work at Final Touch Organizing. Clients who came to her for home organization often left with something that felt more like a personal energy reset.
On the personal side, her Instagram bio — when it was still public — listed crystals, art, photography, travel, and holistic healing alongside baseball with her boys.
That combination says a lot about a person. She’s someone who moves between the corporate and the spiritual without seeing any contradiction there. She believes that what you surround yourself with matters — in your home, your body, your mind.
Her Reaction to The Golden Bachelor
When ABC announced Mel would appear on The Golden Bachelor Season 2, the internet immediately wanted to know what Fabiana Pimentel Owens thought about it.
A reporter from the Daily Mail tracked her down and asked.
Her answer was brief. It was candid. And it was a little sharp.
She said: “Good luck. I mean, it’s going to be bad. But anyway, I don’t want to be involved in this.”
And then she stepped back.
That’s five years of complicated feelings packed into two sentences. She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t give an interview. She didn’t write an essay about her marriage or her ex-husband’s choices.
She made her position clear in about 20 words and then returned to her own life.
That kind of restraint — especially when someone close to you is generating headlines — takes real self-control. A lot of people would have said much more.
What Her Life Looks Like Now
Fabiana Pimentel Owens is 47 years old as of 2025.
She lives in Corona del Mar, California — a beautiful coastal community in Orange County. She has a demanding corporate career leading experiences for a global hotel group. She co-parents two impressive young men who are both headed to play college baseball.
She is also a dog mom, a photographer, a traveler, and a woman who approaches the world through a lens that blends marketing expertise with genuine spiritual practice.
She keeps most of her personal life private now. Her Instagram is no longer public. She doesn’t seek out media attention. She wasn’t the one who went on television to find love in front of a camera.
But she’s not invisible either. She answered the door when the reporter knocked — briefly, honestly, and on her own terms.
Why Her Story Matters
It would be easy to reduce Fabiana Pimentel Owens to a supporting character in Mel Owens’ story. The ex-wife. The backstory. The reason he needs to find love again.
But that framing misses the actual person.
She’s a woman who left Brazil, got two degrees in a second language, raised two children, supported a professional household for over two decades, built a business from scratch during one of the hardest seasons of her life, and landed a leadership role in a global company.
She went through a nearly five-year legal fight without making it ugly in public. She let her kids stay close to their father. She moved on.
The $980,000 settlement? That was the court’s way of accounting for years of financial inequity. That’s not a prize. It’s a correction.
Her story is one of quiet resilience. And that tends to be more durable than any kind of loud drama.
Final Words
Fabiana Pimentel Owens never asked to be famous. She was just a woman from Rio de Janeiro who fell in love, built a family, hit a wall, and kept going.
She didn’t give tearful confessionals to magazines. She didn’t rake her ex-husband over the coals when the cameras pointed at him. She said what she had to say in a handful of words and got on with her life.
That might be the most Brazilian thing about her. Cariocas — people from Rio — tend to carry both warmth and toughness in equal measure. They’ve seen enough of life to know that drama passes. That what matters is what you build next.
Fabiana Pimentel Owens is building. Quietly, professionally, and on her own terms.
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FAQ — 13 Real Questions People Ask
1. Who is Fabiana Pimentel Owens?
She is the ex-wife of Mel Owens — the retired NFL linebacker and attorney who starred in Season 2 of ABC’s The Golden Bachelor. Fabiana is a Brazilian-born businesswoman, mother of two, and the Director of Experiences at Preferred Hotels & Resorts in California.
2. Where is Fabiana Pimentel Owens originally from?
She was born in 1978 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She has lived in the United States for over two decades and currently resides in Corona del Mar, California.
3. What is Fabiana Pimentel Owens’s educational background?
She earned a business degree from Faculdade da Cidade in Brazil and later completed a master’s degree in marketing from UCLA after moving to the US.
4. How long were Fabiana Pimentel Owens and Mel Owens married?
They married on May 17, 2002. Fabiana filed for divorce in February 2020 — roughly 18 years into the marriage. Mel has stated they were together for about 25 years including their time before marriage.
5. Why did Fabiana Pimentel Owens and Mel divorce?
Court documents cite “irreconcilable differences.” Mel Owens told Us Weekly in 2025 that Fabiana had fallen in love with someone else. He spoke about it with sadness but without bitterness.
6. How long did the divorce take?
Nearly five years. Fabiana filed in February 2020 and the divorce was not finalized until December 2024.
7. How much did Mel pay in the divorce settlement?
Court documents obtained by Us Weekly show Mel was ordered to pay approximately $980,000. The amount covered unpaid child and spousal support, property division, court sanctions against Mel, and Fabiana’s legal fees. Fabiana waived ongoing alimony in exchange.
8. Who kept the family home?
Mel Owens kept the family home in Orange County, California, which was valued at over $2 million.
9. Do Fabiana and Mel have children together?
Yes. They have two sons: Lucas (born 2005) and Andre (born 2007). Both boys are talented baseball players hoping to play at the college level.
10. What does Fabiana do professionally now?
She serves as Director of Experiences at Preferred Hotels & Resorts, based out of Corona del Mar, California. She began this role in May 2023.
11. What was Final Touch Organizing?
It was a holistic home and office organization company that Fabiana co-founded with fellow Brazilian entrepreneur Karine Schaefer in April 2020. The business incorporated Feng Shui principles and ran until 2023.
12. What did Fabiana say about Mel going on The Golden Bachelor?
She told the Daily Mail: “Good luck. I mean, it’s going to be bad. But anyway, I don’t want to be involved in this.” She gave no further comment.
13. Is Fabiana still using the Owens last name?
Yes. As of 2025, she still uses “Fabiana Pimentel Owens” on both LinkedIn and Instagram — even after the divorce was finalized.
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