Jenny Liebert’s Extraordinary Journey of Survival and Stardom: From 12 Pole-Dancing Lessons to a 16-Year Global Career

By: Karnvir Mundrey

Jenny Liebert built an international career from a second-hand pole, around 12 lessons and a period of unemployment. Her story spans a women’s fitness centre in Luxembourg, a pole dancing studio in Thailand, love, grief, public judgement and the exhausting cost of always being the capable one.

Jenny Liebert is an entrepreneur and pole dancing instructor whose unconventional career grew from only around 12 formal lessons. At 23, she opened a women’s fitness centre in Luxembourg despite having little experience running a gym. She later built a studio and international community in Thailand, turning an accidental beginning into a 16-year career.

Yet Jenny’s real story is not simply about pole dancing or business. It is about a bullied child who was finally understood by one patient teacher; a young founder who sometimes slept inside her own studio to keep it alive; a woman judged for being comfortable in her body; and a daughter who fought for her father’s dignity when brain cancer left him unable to speak.

“Keep going with your crazy ideas. But find the person who has what you need and ask unapologetically.”

The Palm Tree That Became a Metaphor for Jenny Liebert’s Life

There was once a palm tree growing in a garden in northern France, in a climate where it had little reason to survive.

Jenny Liebert’s mother had seen the tree during a family holiday in the south of France and decided she wanted to take it home. Jenny’s father objected. It would not fit properly in the car. The journey would be difficult. The weather back home would be too cold. The whole idea was impractical.

He complained all the way. But he brought it home. Jenny’s mother dug a protected space in the garden, insulated the soil and cared for the tree through the cold months. Against expectation, it survived.

It did more than survive. It grew tall and strong, possibly the only palm tree of its kind in the region. Jenny tells it as a family memory.

Yet it also feels like a metaphor for her entire life.

Again and again, she has taken ideas that did not appear to belong in their surroundings and found a way to make them live.

A women’s fitness centre created by someone with almost no formal fitness experience. A pole-dancing studio in conservative Luxembourg. An international career born from barely a dozen lessons. New ventures built from instinct, persistence and the refusal to wait until every qualification was in place.

Jenny, too, has spent much of her life growing in climates that were not designed for her.

Jenny Liebert’s Childhood in France: Loved, Restless and Entrepreneurial

Jenny grew up in France, in a town around three hours from Paris. Her father sold cars, although he had once dreamed of designing them. He was funny, emotional and passionate about life. He loved music, shows, holidays and anything that made the ordinary feel theatrical.

Her mother had come to France from Vietnam during the turbulent years surrounding the Vietnam War. She found work sewing clothes in factories and devoted herself to caring for her family.

“She was born to be a mother,” Jenny remembers.

Both parents were deeply protective of their daughter. Jenny had two stepbrothers with whom she had little contact, so she experienced much of childhood as an only child. She remembers those early years with affection. She played with a neighbour, invented games, redesigned gardens, built imaginary houses and cleaned rooms in exchange for pocket money. Even then, she did not merely want to join an activity. She wanted to invent it, organise it and decide how it should operate.

At four, she effectively took control of a small playhouse in the school playground and created her own rules for entry. Other children sometimes paid her in sweets to participate in the games she arranged.

It was entrepreneurship in its earliest, and perhaps most authoritarian, form.

She was mischievous too. She danced on tables while holding open packets of pasta, sending the contents flying across the room. She bought prank powders that made classmates itch or sneeze. Once, she and a friend armed themselves with sticks and went into the countryside intending to hunt snakes. When a real snake finally appeared, it looked at the two self-appointed hunters and continued on its way. Jenny and her friend were left holding their useless sticks.

She was usually obedient, but only until the pressure became too much. Her rebellions were rarely small. On one occasion, feeling trapped by her parents’ protectiveness, she packed her belongings and disappeared with a friend into the countryside. The police searched for them into the night.

That pattern would follow Jenny into adulthood. She could endure restriction for a long time. Then, when something inside her reached its limit, she would move decisively towards freedom.

Bullying, Dyslexia and the Teacher Who Changed Her Life

The confident young girl who once dominated the playground later became an outsider. Jenny was prescribed glasses. She struggled to learn swimming. Her Asian appearance made her visibly different from many of the children around her.

She was bullied by students and, she believes, by some teachers. Like many children, she could not return home and clearly explain what was happening. Her distress appeared indirectly. Her handwriting became erratic, moving from unusually large letters to very small ones. Her mother eventually transferred her from public school to a Catholic girls’ school.

Years later, Jenny recognised traits in herself that she associated with ADHD and dyslexia. Her thoughts often moved faster than her words. She could memorise a poem perfectly at home and then freeze when asked to recite it in front of the class. Teachers called her lazy or assumed that she had not studied. Jenny responded by trying harder. She repeated the material, forced herself to concentrate and wondered why knowledge seemed to vanish precisely when she needed it.

Then she met Madame Chantal. Instead of accepting that Jenny was incapable, Madame Chantal tried to understand the blockage. She created a system of coupons and small rewards to motivate her students. She even gave up several weekends, without payment, to work with Jenny individually. Most importantly, she recognised that the child in front of her was not stupid. She simply needed to be taught differently.

After those sessions, Jenny improved in poetry and dictation. Her intelligence had not suddenly appeared. Someone had finally found the doorway through which it could emerge. Jenny never managed to reconnect with Madame Chantal as an adult. She does not even know the teacher’s full name. It remains one of her regrets.

Madame Chantal may have believed she was merely helping a child with schoolwork. Jenny carried the effect of that kindness for decades. It is a reminder that we rarely know when a little patience has rescued someone.

Gymnastics, Injury, Yoga and Learning Stillness

Movement became one of Jenny’s greatest joys. She practised rhythmic gymnastics, attended circus school and eventually pursued competitive gymnastics. At 16, she moved to a new training centre because she wanted to compete more seriously. An enthusiastic instructor pushed her through an exhausting day of assessments, from morning until late in the evening.

Jenny did not complain. By the time she returned home, she had badly injured both calf muscles. A doctor told her she would have to stop gymnastics for a year. At 16, a year felt less like recovery and more like the end of her identity. She was angry and restless.

Her parents redirected her towards swimming, while her father insisted that she attend yoga and meditation classes taught by an Indian instructor. This was before yoga had become a fashionable Western industry. The sessions involved breathing, body awareness and learning to consciously relax.

Jenny resisted the first two classes. During the third, she decided to try. The instructor taught her how to calm the nervous energy she had carried since childhood. For the first time, she began to understand that strength did not always mean pushing harder. Sometimes strength meant recognising the storm inside before it took control.

What Jenny Learned About Love and Commitment

At 13, shortly after gaining access to the internet, Jenny met a boy online. They fell in love before they properly knew what the other looked like.

Six months later, the boy secretly took a train across France to meet her. He encountered Jenny’s father first, who was understandably horrified to discover that his young daughter had acquired a boyfriend from the internet.

Jenny cried and insisted she loved him. Her father eventually agreed to let the relationship continue, with rules. It lasted four years. Because the couple lived far apart, they had to work hard at school to earn the privilege of meeting during holidays. Their relationship could not survive through convenience.

It had to be chosen.

That became Jenny’s earliest understanding of love. Love was not only chemistry. It was effort. It was planning, sacrifice, keeping promises and boarding the train. Her later relationships would be more complicated, but part of Jenny continued to search for that deliberate commitment.

She has never been particularly comfortable with casual dating. She believes two people need to focus on each other long enough to discover what their relationship could become. Commitment, in her view, is not the prize awarded after certainty. It is the space in which certainty is allowed to develop.

From Business School in Paris to Rome and London

Jenny completed school at 17, specializing in literature and languages. She had once wanted to study science because she loved biology and the human body. But poor experiences with mathematics had persuaded her that she was incapable.

It was not necessarily a lack of talent. It may simply have been another case of inadequate teaching closing a door. She entered business school because she wanted to understand how people transformed ideas into companies. At 18, after receiving strong academic results, she was finally permitted to attend her first party. Her parents dropped her and her best friend at the venue. The floor was sticky and the great entrance into adult nightlife was far less glamorous than expected.

Soon afterwards, she moved to Paris. Her father cried after leaving her in her small apartment. Jenny, meanwhile, felt liberated. For the first time, she could walk through the city without asking permission.

Business school introduced her to new people and an artistic world involving television projects and editorial photography. Her studies later took her to Rome and London.

Rome taught her to survive disorder. Housing was so difficult to find that she and a flatmate lived in a bungalow at a campsite. There were fights with neighbours, improvised revenge involving toilet paper and eggs, and buses that appeared to change numbers halfway through the journey. London felt different. It was lively, international and safer.

After graduating, Jenny became a headhunter in the financial district. She earned well, looked successful and was building an impressive CV. She also hated the job. It was an early lesson in the difference between a life that appears successful and one that feels alive.

How Jenny Liebert Opened a Pole Dancing Studio in Luxembourg

Work and a relationship eventually took Jenny to Luxembourg. After a difficult experience with a manager, she quit her recruitment job. Her savings began to shrink, and she struggled to find another position.

In the apartment stood a second-hand pole she had bought in London. Jenny had taken only around 12 pole dancing classes. She began practising to reduce stress and gradually taught herself more acrobatic movements. At the time, there was little instructional content online because pole dancing was still emerging as a fitness discipline.

Eventually, she created a website offering six lessons because six lessons were roughly all she believed she could teach. Women began arriving at the apartment. Demand grew, another pole was installed, and soon groups were attending classes every evening. Jenny decided to formalise the business.

She found a large space in central Luxembourg. It was too big, too expensive and completely disproportionate to her experience.

She loved it.

At 23, she decided she would create an entire fitness centre for women. She had no meaningful experience running one. She studied workout DVDs, searched for ideas online, painted the premises, bought inexpensive decorations and recruited a small team.

Just before the first classes, the woman she had trained with disappeared. Jenny considered closing. Then a customer walked in and asked to purchase a one-year membership. Jenny suggested that she try a class first. The woman insisted. As Jenny completed the paperwork, she realised that someone had entrusted her with an entire year. The experiment had become a responsibility. She now had to make it work.

Unexpected people arrived to help. Friends of friends taught yoga and Pilates, sometimes without payment, while Jenny assembled a proper team. Some disappeared from her life after that moment. But they had appeared precisely when she needed them.

Not every important person remains forever. Some people enter our lives simply to help us cross one difficult bridge.

Building a Women’s Fitness Centre Around ‘Get Fit, Have Fun’

The first two years of the business were extraordinary. The classes were packed. The team was energetic, experimental and committed. Many of the instructors did not initially have elite fitness qualifications. Because of that, they worked intensely. They studied in the evenings and constantly tried to improve.

They did not want to be frauds. That fear made them better. The center’s philosophy was simple: Get fit, have fun.

Jenny did not want to create another intimidating environment for people who already loved exercise. She wanted ordinary women who felt miserable at the thought of the gym to arrive and feel as though they were meeting friends.

The movement mattered. But so did laughter, belonging and emotional wellbeing. Later, as more conventionally qualified fitness professionals joined, the atmosphere changed. The business became more rigid and focused on sculpted bodies.

It may have become more professional, but some of the original magic was lost. Not every business loses its soul through failure. Some lose it while trying to look more legitimate.

The Hidden Loneliness of Female Entrepreneurship

The business demanded almost everything from Jenny. She sometimes worked from six in the morning until ten at night, including weekends. For the final two years of her time in Luxembourg, she slept inside the fitness centre.

She was surrounded by clients and colleagues but carried much of the responsibility alone. Dating became difficult. The story of a young woman running a pole studio sounded exciting until people discovered that she was also living at work and fighting every day to keep the business alive.

Those years revealed one of the cruellest contradictions faced by strong women. People admire independence in theory. In practice, they may find its reality intimidating. Jenny was not looking for someone to rescue her. She wanted someone capable of standing beside her. She did not need an admirer.

She needed a partner.

How Pole Dancing Became a 16-Year International Career

Jenny says she never consciously chose pole dancing.

“Pole dancing chose me.”

During her second class, a painful movement made her decide she never wanted to do it again. Had she found another job in Luxembourg, she believes the pole would probably have remained a hobby.

But her students kept asking for the next lesson. Their expectations forced her to improve. What began almost accidentally became a 16-year international career.

Jenny also got certified as a US ACE personal trainer.

A trip to Thailand created the next turning point. Jenny met women performing in bars and offered to teach them more advanced pole movements. Their employer later invited her back to train performers.

During the trip, Jenny met a professional who was staying in the same villa. He asked whether she would return to Thailand to explore a relationship. Jenny told him to say clearly what he wanted. He did. She moved.

In Thailand, Jenny opened a studio, taught international visitors, organised camps and developed a global reputation. Pole dancing gave her a career, a community and a life across countries. It also created a public stereotype she has spent years trying to escape.

Pole Dancing, Athleticism and the Stereotypes Women Face

Pole dancing often requires exposed skin because the body needs direct contact with the pole for grip. Yet many people notice the clothing before they recognise the athleticism. Friends still explain that Jenny practises pole dancing ‘as a sport’, as though her career requires immediate defence.

Jenny also refuses to apologize for enjoying clothes that make her feel attractive.

For her, sexiness is not necessarily a performance for male attention. It can be confidence, embodiment and the enjoyment of one’s own appearance.

The problem begins when sexiness becomes the only thing others are willing to see.

Some men assume that a woman comfortable with her body cannot be loyal. Others assume that beauty compensates for a lack of intelligence. Some women worry that Jenny may flirt with their partners.

These assumptions are almost entirely opposite to how she understands herself. She has spent her career creating communities for women. She views sexuality as something intimate and meaningful, not casual social entertainment.

As she moves into new businesses, she worries that her public image creates a credibility deficit. She knows that dressing conventionally changes how people respond to her. But she resents the implication that the same brain becomes less capable when she wears a short skirt.

The question beneath her frustration is one many women understand: How much of myself must I hide before you are prepared to respect the rest of me?

What Strong Women Need From Love and Leadership

Jenny has spent most of her adult life making decisions. She has built businesses, managed teams, moved countries and solved crises. That does not mean she always wants to lead.

She appreciates leadership, not superiority. Real leaders teach, empower and strengthen the people around them. Jenny believes relationships begin to deteriorate when gestures of love become duties.

She truly appreciates when she can surrender responsibility from time to time -but only to someone who has earned her trust. To her, trust is never built through impressive promises. It is built by consistently doing what one says one will do. In business and in Love. When someone give her this space to breath, she feel truly grateful for it.

She is naturally drawn to intelligence, ambition, and vision, yet those qualities hold little value without emotional depth to support them.

Her view of leadership is simple: true leaders do not seek superiority. They inspire, teach, empower, and elevate the people around them. The same philosophy extends to relationships, where she believes the strongest connections begin to fade the moment acts of love become obligations rather than genuine choices.

Cooking, caring, listening and supporting may begin as choices. Over time, couples start treating them as obligations.

Appreciation disappears. Love becomes administration. She believes partners should periodically ask each other: How was this year for you? What has changed? What are you afraid of now? What do you want from the next chapter? How can I support the person you are becoming?

People change, but relationships often continue under agreements made by earlier versions of themselves.

Intimacy: Seeing the Person Behind the Public Strength

Jenny describes intimacy through a simple phrase: “Into me, you see.”

To be intimate with someone is to see beyond the body, clothing, profession, competence and public confidence. It is to understand what frightens the person, what causes her anger and what she needs when she can no longer be strong.

Jenny is emotional and unashamed of it. But she rarely cries in front of others. Not because she wants to appear invulnerable. She has simply learned that crying before the wrong person can feel lonelier than crying alone.

In difficult moments, she does not always need someone to solve the problem. She needs someone capable of saying: “I understand. You are not alone. We will face this together.”

Grief, Brain Cancer and Fighting for Her Father’s Dignity

The most painful test of Jenny’s strength came when her father developed brain cancer. After a second surgery, he woke unable to speak, with half of his body paralysed.

Jenny returned to France and found herself trying to navigate a medical system in which responsibility appeared fragmented. Her father could not feed himself. He could not read or write. Communication happened through his eyes.

Jenny played his favourite music and watched his expressions.

“Am I doing this correctly? Are you frightened? What do you need? What would I need if I were you?”

She understood that her father did not want his suffering prolonged through invasive interventions that offered no meaningful recovery. As his condition deteriorated, Jenny fought for stronger pain relief. After a forceful confrontation with the medical team, he was moved to palliative care.

He died peacefully two days later. The experience left Jenny with difficult questions about dignity, suffering and the right to make decisions at the end of life. It also taught her that patience and politeness are not always virtues.

When the wellbeing of someone you love is at stake, being agreeable can allow less invested people to make irreversible choices. Her father had once complained while carrying a palm tree across France for his wife. Now he could no longer tell his daughter what he needed.

So Jenny learned to listen to his eyes.

Jenny Liebert’s Biggest Entrepreneurship Lesson: Ask for Help

At the time of the interview, Jenny was exploring new ventures, including a platform intended to support pole instructors and a second-hand marketplace in Thailand. The challenge was no longer whether she could build something.

She has already proved that. The challenge is learning not to build everything alone. If Jenny could speak to the 23-year-old woman who opened that oversized fitness centre, she would say two things.

First: Keep going with the crazy ideas.

Second: Find the person who has what you need and ask unapologetically.

Jenny was raised to believe that doing everything herself was evidence of character. There was dignity in that belief, but also a trap. Capability can become its own prison. When you are good at solving problems alone, the world keeps allowing you to solve them alone.

People praise your strength while quietly benefiting from it. Jenny no longer needs more evidence that she is capable. She has built companies without experience, transformed a handful of lessons into an international career, created communities, survived public judgement and accompanied her father through death.

The next chapter of her life does not need to prove that she can survive another winter. That has already been established.

Perhaps the next chapter is about finding people who recognise the palm tree before it has grown: people who do not merely admire its strength after all the difficult work is finished, but arrive early enough to help prepare the ground.

For much of her life, Jenny has been the dreamer, the carrier and the person protecting the roots. Now, perhaps, she is learning that strength is not only the ability to carry more.

Sometimes strength is finally allowing someone else to lift the other side. Some people build careers from carefully designed plans.

Karnvir Mundrey is the Editor of TheFutureOfPR.com. Reach out at tfofpr@gmail.com or at +918296303806.

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