Never before seen pictures from Meghan Markle’s childhood reveals she was a party-loving teen

Meghan Markle had a gap-toothed smile, an eye-catching Afro hairstyle, and a picture of Bart Simpson embossed on her faded blue jeans.

Sitting beside her in orange shorts and a top that shows off her toned midriff, her mother, Doria, then 36, almost looks young enough to be her sister. As these charming photographs reveal, as Meghan emerged from the chrysalis of childhood and entered adolescence, she remained, at heart, a devoted family girl. The pictures are taken from an album kept by Meghan’s uncle, Joseph Johnson, Doria’s half-brother.

Today, we show her growing up and blossoming into a beautiful young woman who would go on to achieve fame as an actress before finding her prince. Wearing a patterned red bikini and carrying a bucket and spade, she enjoys a day at the beach, near her home in Santa Monica.

She had been taken there by her grandmother, Jeanette Johnson, who often looked after her while her parents, Doria and Tom Markle, were working. In another picture, showing the bond between the pair, Meghan smiles as she clasps a Cabbage Patch doll. We next see her aged 12, again flanked by her gran, at the fourth birthday party of her cousin Donovan (who’s out of shot), the son of Mr Johnson’s younger sister, Saundra.

Meghan’s tenderness is evident in a moving picture of her as a teenager, holding hands with Jeanette, whose health was then failing. In her grandmother’s final years, during the late 1990s, Meghan and her mother drove three hours every fortnight to visit her at home, in Fresno, California.

By then in the full flush of youth, Meghan offset the sombreness of these trips by going out with her cousins. ‘My sons Shawn and Jason were close in age to Meghan,’ her uncle said. ‘They went out to parties together.’