54 Facts About Doris Duke

Doris Duke was an American billionaire tobacco heiress, philanthropist, and socialite.

Doris Duke was often called "the richest girl in the world".

Doris Duke was active in preserving more than 80 historic buildings in Newport, Rhode Island.

In 1968, Doris Duke created the Newport Restoration Foundation, and Kennedy Onassis was appointed the vice president and championed the foundation.

Doris Duke donated funds to support and educate black students in the American South who were disadvantaged because of racism.

Doris Duke's estimated $1.3 billion fortune was largely left to charity.

Duke's legacy is administered by the Doris Duke Foundation, dedicated to medical research, prevention of cruelty to children and animals, the performing arts, wildlife, and ecology.

Doris Duke was born in New York City, the only child of tobacco and hydroelectric power tycoon James Buchanan Doris Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman, widow of William Patterson Inman.

At his death in 1925, the elder Doris Duke's will bequeathed the majority of his estate to his wife and daughter, along with $17 million in two separate clauses of the will to The Doris Duke Endowment he had created in 1924.

Doris Duke spent her early childhood at Doris Duke Farms, her father's 2,700-acre estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey.

Doris Duke received large bequests from her father's will when she turned 21,25, and 30; she was sometimes referred to as the "world's richest girl".

Doris Duke's mother died in 1962, leaving her jewelry, a coat, and an additional $250 million.

When Doris Duke came of age, she used her wealth to pursue a variety of interests, including extensive world travel and the arts.

Doris Duke studied singing with Estelle Liebling, the voice teacher of Beverly Sills, in New York City.

In 1945, Doris Duke began a short-lived career as a foreign correspondent for the International News Service, reporting from different cities across the war-ravaged Europe.

Today, his farm is part of Malabar Farm State Park, made possible by a donation from Doris Duke that helped purchase the property after Bromfield's death.

Doris Duke extended new greenhouses from the Horace Trumbauer conservatory at her home in Duke Farms, New Jersey.

Doris Duke designed the architectural, artistic and botanical elements of the displays based on observations from her extensive international travels.

Doris Duke labored on their installation, sometimes working 16-hour days.

Doris Duke had learned to play the piano at an early age; she developed a lifelong appreciation of jazz and befriended many jazz musicians.

Doris Duke liked gospel music and sang in a gospel choir.

Doris Duke cultivated an extensive art collection, principally of Islamic and Southeast Asian art.

Doris Duke acquired a number of homes; her principal residence and official domicile was Doris Duke Farms, her father's 2,700 acre estate in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey.

Doris Duke maintained two apartments in Manhattan: a nine-room penthouse with a 1,000-square-foot veranda at 475 Park Avenue that was later owned by journalist Cindy Adams; and another apartment near Times Square that she used exclusively as an office for the management of her financial affairs.

Doris Duke purchased her own Boeing 737 and redecorated the interior of the plane to travel between homes and her trips to collect art and plants.

Doris Duke was a hands-on homeowner, even climbing a three-story scaffolding to clean tile murals in the courtyard of Shangri La, and working side-by-side with her gardeners at Doris Duke Farms.

Doris Duke's friends warned him she would not take it well.

Doris Duke moved from the passenger seat to the driver's seat in order, she said later, to drive the car forward and pick up Tirella once the gate was open.

Doris Duke found initially that the police file on the case and the transcripts of the wrongful death suit brought by Tirella's family were missing from archives where they would normally be kept, but was able to find some of those documents.

Shortly before the medical examiner arrived at the hospital, for instance, Doris Duke had hired him as her personal physician, meaning anything she told him was protected by doctor-patient privilege.

Lance, and several other experts who reviewed the evidence, concluded that it was far more likely that Doris Duke had deliberately run Tirella over out of rage at his decision to leave her for Hollywood.

Shortly after the case was closed, Doris Duke began making considerable philanthropic contributions to the city, including the repair of Cliff Walk around her estate, previously a source of friction between her and the city when her dogs had attacked tourists, and $10,000 to the hospital to which she had been taken the night of the accident.

Cromwell was a New Deal advocate like his wife; Doris Duke used her fortune to finance his political career.

On September 1,1947, while in Paris, Doris Duke became the third wife of Porfirio Rubirosa, a diplomat from the Dominican Republic.

Doris Duke paid his second wife, actress Danielle Darrieux, $1 million to agree to an uncontested divorce.

Doris Duke lacked parenting skills, spoiling him and sending him to boarding school.

Doris Duke posted bail of $5,000,000 for her friend, former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos, after the latter was arrested in 1988 for racketeering.

Also in 1988, at the age of 75, Doris Duke legally adopted a woman named Chandi Heffner, then a 35-year-old Hare Krishna devotee and sister of the third wife of billionaire Nelson Peltz.

Doris Duke initially maintained that Heffner was the reincarnation of her only biological child Arden, who died soon after birth in 1940.

Doris Duke was the life beneficiary of two trust funds created by her father, James Buchanan Doris Duke, in 1917 and 1924.

Doris Duke owned numerous shares in big-name companies, such as General Motors, and had a large financial team of bankers and accountants to manage her holdings.

Also in Doris Duke's collection were over 2,000 bottles of rare wine and the Doris Duke collection of fine jewels.

Doris Duke's Foundation intended that Duke Gardens "reveal the interests and philanthropic aspirations of the Duke family, as well as an appreciation for other cultures and a yearning for global understanding".

In 1963, Doris Duke funded the construction of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram on land leased from the state forestry department of Uttar Pradesh in India.

In 1968, Doris Duke created the Newport Restoration Foundation with the goal of preserving more than eighty colonial buildings in the town.

Former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, with whom Doris Duke was friends, was the vice president and publicly supported the foundation.

Doris Duke did much additional philanthropic work and was a major benefactor of medical research and child welfare programs.

Doris Duke began trying to walk while she was still heavily medicated and fell, breaking her hip.

Doris Duke died at her Falcon Lair home in Los Angeles on October 28,1993, at the age of 80.

Doris Duke was cremated 24 hours after her death and her executor, Bernard Lafferty, scattered her ashes into the Pacific Ocean as her last will specified.

Doris Duke's will created a $7 million trust fund for her nephew Walker Inman Jr, who already had a trust from Doris Duke's mother's estate.

Doris Duke appointed her butler, Bernard Lafferty, as executor of her estate.

At death, Doris Duke's fortune was estimated at upwards of $1.2 billion.

Auction house Christie's published a heavily illustrated catalog of more than 600 pages for its auction of "The Doris Duke Collection, sold to benefit the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation", held in New York City over three days in 2004.