Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht relationship: How the founders of Canva met, love story and everything to know | Explainer

Melanie Perkins is the CEO of the business she co-founded with her husband Cliff Obrecht. He is the COO (chief operating officer). Together they have just been announced among some of the richest people in Australia.

The husband and wife duo have scored a place at number 10 on The Australian’s annual Australia’s Richest 250 list. Not far behind Clive Palmer at number six and Gina Rinehart at number one.

The pair co-founded the design software company in 2013 and rode the growing success of the now widely-popular brand right to the top of Australia’s financial food chain.

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Perkins and Obrecht first met at university in 2006 and were dating at the time they started their business, which began as an online school yearbook design business called Fusion Books. During those early days, they worked from Perkin’s mum’s house. 

“My mum’s living room became my office, and my boyfriend became my business partner,” Perkins told CNBC in 2020.

By 2012, they launched Canva. 

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“Over five years, Cliff and I grew Fusion Books into the largest yearbook company in Australia and expanded into France and New Zealand,” Perkins said in a 2022 interview with The Profile.

“But we knew all along that the technology we had built could be applied much more broadly which is when Canva was born.”

Over the years it grew into a worldwide business and in 2024 was valued at almost $50 billion dollars, per the Australian Financial Review. Perkins and Obrecht personally have a combined net worth of $14.02 billion.

As their wallets ballooned and their relationship as co-founders grew stronger so too did their romantic relationship.

Obrecht proposed to his tech CEO partner during a trip to Turkey in 2020. The engagement ring, according to some reports, was worth just $30.

In January 2021, they got married in a ceremony on Rottnest Island in Western Australia and a year later Perkins gave birth to their first child.

The couple have kept their private lives relatively under wraps but Perkins told The Australian in 2023 that navigating motherhood for the first time has “been fun, really fun”.

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Despite enjoying lavish holidays and the trappings of achieving billionaire status, Obrecht has committed to never “hoarding” their wealth.

“Mel and I are committed to giving away all our money to make the world a better place,” he told The Australian.

“I think with running such a large company with such a significant valuation now, it’s an obligation on us to use that to be a force for good and make the world a better place, rather than just hoard s–t.

“We live pretty modestly and we don’t really see the need to just accrue wealth. The priority for the company is education, because we really feel educating underprivileged people gives them the opportunity to break the cycle.”

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Celebrities who won’t leave their fortunes to their children

While they may be among Australia’s wealthiest, they plan to share their riches around. 

The duo launched the Canva Foundation where they have pledged to donate 30 per cent of the company to “do good in the world”.

“It has felt strange when people refer to us as ‘billionaires’ as it has never felt like our money, we’ve always felt that we’re purely custodians of it,” Perkins wrote in a 2021 blog post.

“We have this wildly optimistic belief that there is enough money, goodwill and good intentions in the world to solve most of the world’s problems and we want to spend our lifetime working towards that.”

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