Monica Beverly Hillz
Chicago-born trans-activist icon who came out on RuPaul's Drag Race Season 5 in a genuinely history-making moment for reality TV.
Shop Monica Beverly Hillz merchMonica Beverly Hillz is a name that comes with an asterisk on the show's own timeline: she is the first drag contestant ever to come out as a transgender woman during a season of RuPaul's Drag Race, doing so mid-critique in Season 5's third episode in 2013, a first for reality television., in Chicago in 1985, she took her drag name from a Bollywood-inspired first, an obsession with Hollywood glamour, and a Latina 'z' finish. She placed 12th that season, then returned a decade later for All Stars 8 in 2023 with the track 'Not a Soul Can Clock,' now firmly established as one of the franchise's elder-stateswoman voices for trans and queer liberation. Beyond the show she's a longtime performer, DJ, and community advocate whose career pre-dates and now extends well past her Drag Race chapters.



