Trump was born in Manhattan, New York City, and is the second child of Czech-American model Ivana (née Zelníčková) and Donald Trump, who in 2017 became the 45th president of the United States. Her father has German and Scottish ancestry. For most of her life, she has been nicknamed "Ivanka", a Slavic diminutive form of Ivana. Her parents divorced in 1992 when she was ten years old. She has two brothers, Donald Jr. and Eric, a half-sister, Tiffany, and a half-brother, Barron.
On February 2, 2017, after months of customers boycotting and poor sales, department store chains Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom dropped Trump's fashion line, citing "poor performance." Other retailers such as Marshall's, TJ Maxx and the Hudson's Bay Company stopped selling her products.
On February 9, 2017, presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway controversially encouraged Fox News viewers to purchase Trump's retail products. In June 2017, three people with the organization called China Labor Watch were arrested by Chinese authorities while investigating Huajian International, which makes shoes for several American brands, including Ivanka Trump's brand. The Trump Administration called for their release.
In May 2017, her second self-help book, Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success, was published; she used the services of a writer, a researcher, and a fact-checker. The book debuted in the number four spot in the "Advice, How-To and Misc." category of The New York Times Best Seller list, received a great deal of negative criticism and was absent from the list two weeks later.
Trump has collected the work of artists who have protested to her directly following her father's election victory. In January 2017, artist Richard Prince returned a $36,000 payment he received for a work featuring Ivanka and disavowed its creation. Other artists joined behind a movement created by the Halt Action Group called @dear_ivanka, which aimed to change Trump's policies by appealing to Ivanka. Among its supporters were contemporary artist Alex Da Corte who told Trump to stay away from his paintings after she appeared in front of one on a social media post.
In January 2017, Trump resigned from her position at the Trump Organization. The organization also removed images of Trump and her father from their websites, in accordance with official advice on federal ethics rules. In the early months of her father's presidency, some commented that she was filling a quasi–first lady role while First Lady Melania Trump remained in New York City (her son Barron completed the school year in New York before the first lady moved to Washington); Trump stated that she had no intention of being the first lady.
After advising her father in an unofficial capacity for the first two months of his administration, Trump was appointed "First Daughter and Senior Advisor to the President," a government employee, on March 29, 2017; According to the administration, she takes no salary. Prior to becoming a federal employee, she used a personal email for government work.
It was announced by Donald Trump in August 2017 that his daughter would lead the U.S. delegation to India in the fall in global support of women's entrepreneurship. In response to the announcement, an Indian diplomat was quoted as stating, "We regard Ivanka Trump the way we do half-wit, Saudi princes. It's in our national interest to flatter them." The majority of reactions to her actual performance alongside P.M. Modi at the event were substantial. Anu Acharya, the founder of a medical diagnosis company, said: "What mattered to me is that she has been an entrepreneur, and she is an adviser to the president of the U.S." Shveta Raina, who runs Talerang, a startup that prepares Indian college graduates for the workplace, said Trump exceeded her expectations. "She was poised and was able to answer questions that were seemingly off-script. I think she is young and represents young women, so I think she was the right choice." Still, the local media dubbed hers "a royal visit."
In January 2017 it was announced that she and Kushner had made arrangements to establish a family home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Federal filings implied that, in 2017, Trump and her husband may have assets upwards of $740 million. They had previously shared an apartment on Park Avenue in New York City, which Trump chose due to its proximity to her work with the Trump Organization. The residence was featured in Elle Decor in 2012 with Kelly Behun as its interior decorator. The apartment included work by American artists John Baldessari and Rob Wynne.
Trump and her husband made a pilgrimage to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, a popular prayer site, shortly before her father's election victory. On May 22, 2017, the couple also traveled with her father on the first official visit to Israel by his administration, when her father made the first visit to the Western Wall by a sitting U.S. president. Ivanka also visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in western Jerusalem and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem during the trip.