His family has a rich heritage of brilliant dancers. His grandparents were dancers, and so are his parents. In fact, Marianne, his mother and Bruce Hough, his father met while they were in a dancing team in Idaho. He has 4 siblings, and is the only son of his parents. He started learning dance at an extremely young age, and at the age of 12, he moved to London only to study dancing. His sister also moved to London after some time, although she returned home after five years. Derek intended to stay there for only one year at first, but ultimately spent a decade there. Derek and his sister, along with Mark, the coach’s son became close friends and studied different forms of dancing as well as music in the same school. They opened a band at that time and named it 2B1G, and often participated in different competitions throughout the country.

He is a brilliant dancer and became the IDSF World Youth Latin Champion in 2002, and also won the New York Dance Alliance Outstanding Dance awards. He also played an important role in “Make Your Move”, a 2013 South Korean-American dance film.

He has participated in consecutive seasons of the “Dancing with the Stars” on ABC, and has been one of the most successful participants of the contest. He first came to the show as a guest instructor in the middle of the 4th season. The next season, he came back as a full time participant. He participated in all seasons from the 5th to the 21st.

He is the most successful participant of the show, with 6 wins to his name. He won the 7th, 10th, 11th, 16th, 17th as well as 21st season. His worst performance was in the 6th season, where he came 6th. His partner that season was the popular actress, Shannon Elizabeth. He did comment after the end of some seasons that he is probably going to retire from the show; still he always made a last minute decision that he is going to join once again. Hopefully he will continue working in the next season too.

He has a huge fan following on Twitter and Instagram; he is quite active on those sites too.

Unlike other celebrities in Hollywood, Derek doesn’t have an extensive lists of girlfriend. His last relationship was with Nina Dobrev 2 years ago, in 2015. He had a relationship with Nikki Reed, which was never officially stated. And now, there are lots of rumours that he is dating the popular actress Kate Hudson, but once again, neither of them has officially confirmed anything. There were some rumours recently that Derek got married secretly, but ultimately this turned out to be a false rumour.

He has an estimated net worth of $3 million, as of 2015.