Cleopatra was of Macedonian Greek heritage
There's confusion about what Cleopatra looked like. Most people who don't know better have assumed Cleopatra was an ethnic Egyptian. Egyptians of the ancient world were not African blacks. That would be the Nubian people far to the south of the ancient Egyptian empire. But the Egyptians of the ancient world did have brown complexions, but they're weren't blacks in today's modern sense of the word.
People may also be confusing Cleopatra with Nefertiti, a true ethnic Egyptian woman.
Cleopatra was of Macedonian Greek ethnicity. Three hundred years earlier, upon the death of Alexander the Great (a Macedonian), one of his Macedonian generals, Ptolemy, took Egypt for himself and declared himself king. The Egyptian populace accepted their new, foreign leaders. The Ptolemy dynasty would remain more or less stable, for the next three centuries, the ruling Ptolemy family more or less ruling competently, until the Roman conquest. As far as historians know, the ruling Ptolemy family kept pure its Hellenistic Greek lineage by marriage with aristocratic Greek or Macedonian people. There were no doubt, Egyptian mistresses and concubines, but offspring of any such liasions were excluded from the throne.
Cleopatra may therefore even looked like a white-skinned woman in her thirties (she was around 38 at the time of her suicide) with dark, almost black hair. While we assume ancient Greeks and Macedonians were olive-complexioned, ancient Greek writings sometimes describe beautiful Greek women with white, very fair or alabaster skin. Pictures of modern Greek women typically show most with fair complexions, almost northern European.
I suggest taking a look on the Internet of the 19th century French painter, Jean-Andre Rixon's stylized artistic rendition of the supine, nude, Cleopatra, just minutes into her suicide. You see a white woman with creamy alabaster skin, black hair and eyebrows, as if she is sleeping. She is very fleshy and full-bodied which carries a sensous appeal of its own. Don't forget that Cleopatra had already borne four children in her life. She was 38 years old, and as queen, had continual access to good food in quantity. The Kate Moss thin figure was not the standard of feminine sexuality back then. For a man it's near-arousing to see her regal naked glory, even in recent death. But this is stylistic artist's rendition. You and I know that people who commit suicide almost always keep their clothes on. The only exception we know of are those who kill themselves while sitting in their bathtubs filled with very warm, almost hot, bath water. Artistic paintings of Cleopatra's suicide were popular in the later 19th century. Every one of those European paintings depict Cleopatra nude or almost nude. With the exception of Rixon's painting which tries to depict Cleopatra's fair-skinned, Macedonian Greek ethnicity, the other artist's renditions portray Cleopatra as a northern European female.