Hans-Holger was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1963 to Heidi Adele and Ernst (Carl Julius) Albrecht, a prominent Christian Democratic Union politician and European Commission official He grew up in Burgdorf in Germany. He is a descendant of Baron Ludwig Knoop, a cotton merchant of the city-state Free Hanseatic City of Bremen and one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the 19th century.
He graduated in Law at the University of Freiburg in Germany, studied at Yale University, and received a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Bochum in Germany.
He is Chief Executive Officer of Deezer, one of the largest music streaming services worldwide. Deezer offers more than 35 million tracks in over 180 countries to currently more than 16 million active monthly users. He is the brother of Ursula von der Leyen, German Federal Minister of Defence.
In 1971 the family moved to Germany, where Ernst Albrecht became Premier of Lower Saxony (1976–1990).
Hans-Holger worked for Daimler-Benz in 1990 and for the Luxembourg-based media group CLT forerunner of RTL Group. from 1991 to 1996. At CLT, he was responsible for all television activities and for business development in Germany and Eastern Europe.
He worked on new projects for RTL2 in Germany, RTL 7 (Poland), RTL Klub in Hungary, and Channel 5 (United Kingdom), in the United Kingdom. He was also responsible for the launch of the Super RTL channel in Germany and for the development of CLT’s digital television project, Club RTL. He started his career at Modern Times Group MTG Bachelor of Arts in 1997 as Head of the pay-television operations at Viasat Broadcasting. In 1999, he was appointed as Head of all of Viasat Broadcasting’s operations.
In April 2000, he was appointed Chief Operating Officer (chief operating officer) of MTG. During his tenure, MTG’s sales more than doubled from 5.4 billion Swedish krona in 2000 to 13.5 billion krona in 2011.
MTG now has free-television operations in 11 countries and satellite pay-television platforms in 9 countries, operates the Viaplay Nordic online pay-television service and its portfolio of 20 thematic movie, sports and documentary pay-television channels are available in 34 countries across Europe, Russia, the Commonwealth of Independent States , Africa and the United States. In November 2012, Hans-Holger became President and Chief Executive Officer of Millicom, an international telecommunications and media company. During his time at Millicom he transformed the company into a Digital Lifestyle company developing several new digital products and services.
He became the Chief Executive Officer of Deezer in 2015. Previously she was appointed Federal Minister of Labour and Social Affairs on 30 November 2009 and, prior to that, Federal Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth from 2005.
