She had a stint at Deutsche Bank in New York before returning to London, where she took up a position as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Just when she was on the verge of enrolling in an MBA program at Harvard University, she met Bashar al-Assad, and this encounter changed the course of her life.
Back in the early 1990s, Asma met Assad during a visit to Syria, where she was staying with her aunt. At that time, he was in the process of training to become an ophthalmologist, while she was focused on her studies in finance. In the year 2000, they got married. She was 25 years old then, and he was 10 years her senior. Around that time, Syria had been preparing Assad to take on the role of the country’s future leader. With the tragic passing of his older brother, who was the intended heir, in a car accident, Bashar assumed the responsibility of leading Syria after their marriage in 2000.
Asma chose not to adhere to the traditional practice of covering herself with a burqa or veil, which set her apart as an independent-minded woman and seemed to symbolize the more liberal aspects of Syrian society at that time. Initially, many people had high hopes that the couple would contribute to making Syria a more progressive nation. However, the subsequent years witnessed a series of extremely challenging and tragic events that no one had anticipated.
