Queen Noor

Lisa Najeeb Halaby was born in 1951 to Najeeb and Doris Halaby in California. Growing up she spent a lot of time with her paternal grandmother.

Her family moved to Washington in the early 1960s because her father had been created the director of the FAA under President Kennedy. Later Najeeb became the second director of PAN-AM and the family spent a lot of time traveling places because it was free. During this time Lisa went to a school that she did not like because it did not let her be who she wanted to be. She then transferred to another school that was more suited to her style and then went on to Princeton. Halfway through she took some time off to travel in the United States, but went back to get her masters in Urban Planning.

After she graduated in the mid 1970s she went to Australia where she worked for a company based partly in the middle East. She was then transferred to the middle east and fell in love with it because of her middle-eastern descent. Because her father was the president of PAN-AM he knew famous people and during a tour of the middle east had Lisa meet King Hussein of Jordan. Nothing happened at first, but several months later he invited her to his castle for lunch and to meet the children of his last wife that had died in a helicopter accident. They soon fell in love and got married. Lisa became a muslim and Hussein gave her the title of Queen Noor meaning light in Arabic. Noor and Hussein eventually added to his 8 children with four of their own. Their marriage was not perfect, they had many trials and hardships dealing with everything going on in the middle east at the time, but they were happy and they loved each other.

One of the first women to graduate from Princeton University in New Jersey when it had gone co-ed, has numerous honorary doctorates from different colleges and universities for her years of charity and humanitarian work on behalf of many causes. Upon her marriage to King Hussein in 1978, he paid a 3 million dollar dowry to Lisa's father.

Has two sons: Prince Hamzah (b. 29 March 1980), and Prince Hashim (b. 10 June 1981), and two daughters: Princess Iman (b. 24 April 1983), and Princess Raiyah (b. 9 February 1986).

Younger brother, Christian Halaby, is a composer and guitarist, and younger sister, Alexa Halaby, was a University of Pennsylvania squash champion who was a bridesmaid at the 1986 wedding of Maria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Then in the mid to late 1990s Hussein found out that he had cancer.

Currently residing in London, England and Washington D.C. -her birthplace and Amman, Jordan. [June 2006]