He is the youngest of eight children, two of them, Mario and Vladimir, Alice, Clara, Esperanza, Tatiana and Asia.

[1] He is the son of Cruz Villegas, head union communist,[2] confined to the Amazon jungle during the dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and former president of the United Workers of Venezuela (CUTV) and vice president of the World Federation of Trade Unions.

His mother, Maja Poljak was Jewish and a Communist social activist and photographer born in Zagreb, Croatia, formerly Yugoslavia.

He had worked in media such as newspapers Economía Hoy, El Nuevo País, El Universal and Quinto Día, En Confianza, Despertó Venezuela and Toda Venezuela of Venezolana de Televisión.

In November 2017, Ernesto Villegas was sanctioned by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control after the 2017 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election.