15 Facts About Florence Broadhurst

Florence Maud Broadhurst was an Australian painter, wallpaper and fabrics designer and vaudevillian singer, dancer and musician as well as a businesswoman, charity worker and teacher.

Florence Broadhurst was born in Mount Perry, Queensland, at Mungy Station, to stockman, turned grazier and hotelier William Florence Broadhurst and Margaret Anne.

Florence Broadhurst became a singer, winning local eisteddfods, and joined a group known as the Smart Set Diggers who performed in Toowoomba, Queensland.

Florence Broadhurst received mainly positive reviews for her singing and charleston dancing and was photographed in various overseas English-language newspapers including the Eastern Mail Delhi and the South China Morning Post.

Florence Broadhurst then went to England and in 1929, married Percy Walter Gladstone Kann, an English stockbroker.

Kann and Florence Broadhurst separated, and Florence Broadhurst married diesel engineer Leonard Lloyd-Lewis, living in Banstead, Surrey.

Florence Broadhurst travelled widely and produced 114 landscape paintings, which were first shown as "Paintings of Australia" in 1954 at David Jones Art Gallery, Sydney, then later in Brisbane and Canberra.

Florence Broadhurst was a foundation member of the Art Gallery Society of New South Wales and a member of the Society of Interior Designers of Australia, was a teacher of printmaking and sculpture at the National Art School and was involved in a variety of charitable activities.

Florence Broadhurst then ran a motor sales company with her son.

Florence Broadhurst travelled to England in 1973 to receive cell therapy treatment for her failing eyesight and hearing.

In 1959 Florence Broadhurst established Australian Wallpapers Pty Ltd.

In 2017 the Florence Broadhurst archive was purchased by Signature Design Archive and Signature Prints no longer has any association with Broadhurst or her designs.

In late 2008 a rug collection featuring ten Florence Broadhurst designs was released in Australia and the US.

Florence Broadhurst was a victim of homicide, having been viciously beaten in her Paddington business premises on 15 October 1977.

The murder was never solved, but there has been some speculation that Florence Broadhurst was a victim of English-Australian serial killer John Wayne Glover, who was convicted of murdering six elderly women in the Sydney North Shore district between 1989 and 1990 and is thought by police to have been responsible for other deaths.