CHARLESTON — The world needs some joy, and Anna Mathias Rittmeyer is happy to spark it, even in tiny doses.
The Charleston resident and director of marketing for Lovely Bride was recently featured in People, the weekly entertainment magazine, for a photo spread of her social media-famous hedgehog Lenni.
The 2-year-old pet, which weighs less than 2 pounds, has more than 141,000 followers on Instagram, where Rittmeyer regularly posts photographs of the hedgehog’s adventures. Lenni in sunglasses in a handheld stroll downtown. Lenni out for a drive in a pink toy car. Lenni playing pickleball.
“We get so many messages from people, especially moms with kids,” Rittmeyer said. “They look at it at night or they just check in on (the account) to see what’s going on because their kids love it, and then adults love it, too. It’s just really a happy place and, obviously, with so much sadness around, it feels good to bring people joy.”
People described Lenni as having “the aura of a pop princess — like a palm-sized Sabrina Carpenter.”
The tiny hedgehog is the third in a line of celebrity pets.
Rittmeyer first shot to fame in 2015 with Lionel, after adopting him from a fellow College of Charleston student. She loved taking creative photos with her pet and admittedly started his own account because she was putting too many of Lionel on her own page.
“Obviously, I didn’t mean for it to even become a thing,” she said. “I just needed a place to put all the cute pictures, so I started a separate Instagram account.”
In 2017, Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers shared an Instagram photo of the African pygmy hedgehog sitting in an ice cream cone, and from there the account took off.
Rittmeyer remembers being in the movie theater and her sister calling her phone nonstop to tell her the news.
Instagram’s main account made another post in the height of the meme era, and Lionel, soon followed by his companion Lilo, became full-fledged social media celebrities.
When both pets passed away, Rittmeyer and her husband weren’t sure they wanted another hedgehog. But they couldn’t resist Lenni, who tags along with them in a custom-made carrier designed for her.
People magazine reached out to Rittmeyer after a post of Lenni among some downtown Charleston flowers was shared by Apple on social media.
“I love being a happy corner of the internet. It’s … my favorite thing about the account,” Rittmeyer said. “I think that’s why I have done this for so long and continue to do it.”