All About Dua Lipa’s Parents, Anesa and Dukagjin Lipa

Anesa and Dukagjin Lipa have supported their pop star daughter every step of the way

Dua Lipa’s parents, Anesa and Dukagjin Lipa, have inspired and encouraged her to chase her dreams since she was a little girl.

“It was her destiny,” her mom, Anesa, told CBS’ Sunday Morning in 2020 of her daughter’s rise to superstardom following the release of her second album Future Nostalgia, which would later win best pop vocal album at the 2021 Grammys.

The “New Rules” singer is incredibly close with her mom and dad and frequently posts with them on social media. Born to Anesa and Dukagjin in London on Aug. 22, 1995, Dua is the oldest of the couple’s three children. They also share a daughter, Rina, born in 2001, and a son, Gjin, born in 2005.

“So much has happened in my grandparents’ lives, and my parents’ lives,” Dua told The Guardian of her family in 2018. “When you try to come to it and grasp everything there, it’s a lot.”

Her parents and grandparents lived across Kosovo (then part of Yugoslavia) and Bosnia until 1992, when the Bosnian war began; Dua’s parents sought refuge in London while her grandparents stayed behind. In London, they went back to school and raised their family until a job opportunity brought them back to Kosovo when Dua was 11.

As a teenager, Dua had a “good relationship” with her parents, as she told The Guardian. “They trusted me,” she added. At 14, she convinced them to let her return to London and live with family friends to pursue a music career — a move that has panned out rather well for the Grammy winner.

So who are Dua Lipa’s parents? Here’s everything to know about Anesa and Dukagjin Lipa and their relationship with the “Levitating” singer.

They’re both ethnically Albanian

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Dua’s upbringing was steeped in her Kosovan roots, even while growing up in London. “Everything was Albanian at home, and English was my school life,” she told Vanity Fair in 2021. “I had so much family in Kosovo, but also because of the situation and not being able to go back, I had never really met my family.”

Anesa was the child of a Kosovan father and a Bosnian mother. Dukagjin’s father, Seit Lipa, was a renowned historian who was head of the Kosovo Institute of History in the ’90s. Seit lost his job when conflict arose in Kosovo. “Once the Serbians came in, they wanted a lot of the historians to rewrite the history of Kosovo. To change it — that Kosovo was always part of Serbia and never part of Yugoslavia,” Dua told The Guardian. “And my grandfather was one of those people who wouldn’t, so he lost his job because he didn’t want to write a history that he didn’t believe to be true.”

Dukagjin was Anesa’s first boyfriend

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Anesa and Dukagjin got engaged and lived together in Kosovo before escaping the growing conflict in 1992. In London, they married and welcomed Dua in 1995.

The singer spoke to The Guardian about the ways her parents’ relationship shaped her own concept of romance. “You have such high expectations. My mum married the first man she fell in love with — first boyfriend, first everything,” she said. “It does kind of paint this ideal love story in your head.”

Over time, Dua realized that it was okay for her life to take a different path — that she could forge her own timeline, instead of the expected order of “birth, school, university, find a job, fall in love, get married, have kids.”

She continued, “I feel like [for my parents] you turned 28, and people would look at you: ‘Why aren’t you in a relationship yet? Why haven’t you got kids? What’s wrong with you?’ Whereas now — it’s seen as being okay to be selfish. It’s okay to want to better yourself first before you decide to bring other people into the world.”

They fled Kosovo in 1992 and rebuilt their careers in London

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Dukagjin had already made a name for himself in the ’80s as a musician with the Kosovan rock band Oda. Later, he formally trained as a dentist. Meanwhile, Anesa was training as a lawyer in Pristina, Kosovo, the capital city.

When they arrived in London, they took any work they could get in order to cover their expenses. Both of them began working in the hospitality industry, waiting tables, while Dukagjin attended the Chartered Institute of Marketing at night and Anesa retrained in the tourism industry.

In 2011, Dukagjin told Telegrafi that he looked back on their time in London with mixed emotions. After the family moved back to Pristina, he studied mass communication at the Kosovo Institute of Journalism and Communication.

They share three children

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After welcoming the “Sweetest Pie” singer, the pair welcomed daughter Rina in 2001. These days, Rina models for brands like Paco Rabanne and collaborates on clothing lines with Nasty Gal.

Anesa and Dukagjin’s youngest child, son Gjin, was born in 2005. He currently has over 200,000 followers on Instagram.

Dukagjin and Dua co-launched the Sunny Hill Music Festival

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The father-daughter duo shares a passion for music, which they ultimately channeled into the Sunny Hill Festival in Pristina, Kosovo. The festival strives to drive tourism and highlight the cultural organizations at work in the capital.

Dua headlined the first festival in 2018, revealing on social media that she and her dad ultimately donated the 100,000 euros raised by the festival to “charities close to [their] heart, cultural organizations and music schools in Kosovo.” Since then, the festival’s lineups have included artists like J Balvin, Diplo, Miley Cyrus and Stormzy.

A photo of Dukagjin at the Brit Awards went viral in 2019

Dukagjin Lipa and wife Anesa Lipa. DAVID FISHER/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK

Dubbed “the best-looking dad in the music industry” by host Jack Whitehall, Dukagjin turned a few heads at the 2019 Brit Awards. Dua was a good sport throughout the evening — when Whitehall insisted he had a “man crush” on him, Dua joked, “It’s getting out of hand.”

After walking the red carpet with Dua — who was nominated for four awards and took home the award for single of the year for “One Kiss,” — Dukagjin sparked a frenzy on social media. Twitter users fawned over the “silver fox,” comparing him to James Bond. His Instagram following shot up to more than 180,000 in the days after the awards show and has climbed to upward of 300,000 in the years since.

None of this came as a surprise to the singer. “Boys at school would say, ‘Your mum’s really hot.’ And the girls would say, ‘Your dad’s so fit,’ ” Dua told The Guardian in 2018. “Now I find it funny, but as a kid you didn’t want to be different. It made me blush.”

They supported Dua on her Future Nostalgia tour

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Both Anesa and Dukagjin supported their daughter at many stops along her first arena tour in 2022. Anesa posted photos from the Future Nostalgia Tour in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina and more, before wrapping up in Australia.

Dukagjin posted photos and clips from the family’s travels as well, sharing photos of the couple exploring new cities and videos of Dua performing.

Dua credits her parents for inspiring her work ethic

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Although Dua has always been a talented musician, she says she wouldn’t be where is today without hard work and self-discipline — something she picked up from her parents.

“I’ve seen my parents work every day of my life,” Dua told The Guardian. “A big part of who I am has been watching my parents learn to adapt in different places, in different circumstances … And my dad would always tell me: ‘You have to work really, really hard, just to have a tiny bit of luck.’ ”

The “Cold Heart” singer added: “For me, growing up, doing music, watching pop stars on TV — that felt as crazy as cartoons. Totally unbelievable. Not real. What I’ve learned from my parents is this: Everything comes from hard work. And then, maybe, things align.”