Entertainment reporter Leeza Gibbons treats Closer to a tour of her luxurious LA abode.
The talk show host and lifestyle guru created a home that gives her a sense of peace
It makes sense that former Entertainment Tonight and Leeza host Leeza Gibbons launched a new yoga video series. After building her dream home in Beverly Hills with her business partner-husband, Steven Fenton, a few years ago, she found she needed some tranquility! “We drove ourselves crazy looking at land and teardowns for 18 months, and then we were in construction for another 18 months,” Leeza, 60, shares with Closer. “We learned a lot of patience.” And when they saw the completed five-bedroom, six-bath home, it was all worth it.
“To us, it feels like a warm, casually traditional, Cape Cod–inspired home on a tree-lined street,” Leeza says.
After she and Steven, 48, bought the place four years ago, “we lovingly restored it from the studs up,” she reveals. “We kept the basic footprint,
but opened the entry and extended the house toward the back for more family and kitchen space. I also added a lot of pocket doors with exposed beams that would look like they were part of the original house.”
Then Leeza built a romantic home-within-a-home. “We created a suite with a fireplace that’s private and just for us upstairs,” she explains. “That space, which became my dressing room, vanity, bath area and closet, is really where I live. I’m addicted to baths and do a lot of detoxing and luxuriating there!”
And the suite is located right next to her home office, where she works on her 3 Week Yoga Retreat videos. “If I’m writing or working on a project, I might not ever leave that space,” she says. “It’s really tricked out exactly for me.”
But there are plenty of other great spots inside the nearly-7,000-square-foot house, which Leeza personally decorated in a style that’s just as relaxing as the Epsom salt baths she loves. “I really like celadon green, and a lot of pewters and shades of gray and blue all over the house,” she says, “soothing, neutral colors.”
The area outside was just as important to them. “We wanted to create a private park-like setting with outdoor decks facing the backyard, a Jacuzzi — which is the only way to get my collegeaged son, Nathan, to come home,” she says with a laugh, “and a big deck from the guest house facing the pool to create a really nice indooroutdoor living space.”
Ah yes, let’s not forget the 2,000-squarefoot guest house, which — with a bedroom, three baths, gym, kitchen and den — offers room when her adult kids, Lexi, 28, Nathan,
20, and Troy, 26, visit. But even when it’s just her and Steven, she loves that her home “feels like family the minute you walk in.”
— Reporting by Ilyssa Panitz