Doris Duke

• Born: November 22, 1912
• Birthplace: New York, New York
• Died: October 28, 1993
• Place of death: Beverly Hills, California

American socialite, philanthropist, and investor

Duke was a generous philanthropist during her lifetime. Her will endowed the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which provides grants for medical research, wildlife preservation, child abuse prevention, and the performing arts. Her foundation also supports three estates that are educational or recreational centers open to the public.

Sources of wealth: Inheritance; real estate

Bequeathal of wealth: Charity

Early Life

Doris Duke was born in New York City on November 22, 1912. She was the only child of American tobacco and energy tycoon James Buchanan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman, a southern aristocrat and widow of William Patterson Inman. At her birth, Duke was called the world’s richest baby. She had a loving relationship with her father, who treated her as an adult. She had personal servants, including a chauffeur, bodyguards, maids, nurses, and private tutors. Duke led a sheltered life without close friends of her own age. She developed a love for gospel singing on a trip to Harlem in New York City with her father. On his deathbed, Duke’s father told her to trust no one. He died on October 10, 1925, before her thirteenth birthday, leaving her $100 million ($1.25 billion in 2008).

First Ventures

Duke’s father left only a small trust fund to his wife, so the mother-daughter relationship was strained. When her mother began selling family assets, the fourteen-year-old Duke sued her mother in order to stop her. After her father’s death, Duke read bags of mail that he had hidden from her. Death threats and demands for money made Duke realize there were people who hated her for her wealth. For the rest of her life, she would value privacy and security. However, the media was fascinated with the lives of the rich and relentlessly pursued Duke.

When the stock market crashed in 1929 and many of Duke’s affluent friends lost their fortunes, she helped them financially, often secretly. Duke anonymously purchased organs for thousands of small churches in the United States. At the age of twenty-one, Duke used money from a trust fund to establish her first foundation, Independent Aid, later called the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. This foundation was established to perform primarily anonymous philanthropy throughout Duke’s life.

Mature Wealth

In February, 1935, Duke married thirty-eight-year-old Jimmy Cromwell, a playboy with political ambitions. His family had lost much of its fortune, so he needed Duke’s financial support. She gave him a monthly allowance of $10,000 (the equivalent of $125,000 in 2008). Their honeymoon was a two-year trip around the world, during which Duke developed a passion for Southeast Asian and Islamic culture. She purchased priceless art treasures. Their last stop was Honolulu, Hawaii, where Duke built a winter home, Shangri La, in 1937.

Shangri La became Duke’s private retreat, where she could escape unwanted publicity. She built it to house her collection of Islamic art and to create a unique blend of Islamic and Hawaiian architecture and landscape. For more than fifty years, Duke purchased or commissioned pieces for the collection of about thirty-five hundred artifacts. The five-acre Shangri La overlooks the Pacific Ocean and Diamond Head and showcases a seventy-five-foot saltwater pool and exotic gardens.

Cromwell became the U.S. ambassador to Canada in 1939, and the couple was often separated. Convinced that Cromwell was a fortune hunter, Duke was unhappy and had scandalous affairs. In 1940, she gave birth to a premature baby girl, Arden, who lived only one day. Her doctors told Duke she would not be able to have more children. For the rest of her life, Duke grieved for Arden. Cromwell and Duke divorced in 1943.

In 1945, Duke became a foreign correspondent for the International News Service. After World War II, she was a writer for Harper’s Bazaar in Paris, where she met Porfirio Rubirosa, a Dominican diplomat, race car driver, and polo player. They married in September, 1947. He was a notorious playboy, and Duke allegedly had paid $1 million to his previous wife Danielle Darrieux to divorce him. Rubirosa and Duke divorced in 1948.

During her lifetime, Duke made wise investments in real estate. She owned five homes, managed by a permanent staff of more than two hundred people. Her properties included Shangri La, the twenty-seven-hundred-acre Duke Farms in New Jersey, a Beverly Hills mansion, a Park Avenue penthouse, and Rough Point, her summer home in Newport, Rhode Island.

In 1988, at the age of seventy-five, Duke legally adopted thirty-five-year-old Charlene “Chandi” Heffner, whom Duke believed was the reincarnation of her deceased daughter, Arden. Heffner’s friend Bernard Lafferty became Duke’s butler, and James Burns, Heffner’s boyfriend, became Duke’s bodyguard. In 1990 in Hawaii, Duke became mysteriously sick and was knocked unconscious during a fall. Lafferty agreed with Duke that Heffner and Burns were plotting against her. Lafferty and Duke moved to her Beverly Hills mansion. In 1991, Duke ended her relationship with Heffner, who filed a breach-of-contract lawsuit.

During her last years, Duke was a recluse, mistrustful of friends and relatives. It was rumored that Lafferty isolated and controlled her. At his suggestion, she had a series of operations. In 1992, she fell and broke her hip days after getting cosmetic surgery. During recuperation, she took antidepressants, painkillers, and tranquilizers.

In April, 1993, Duke signed her final will, which named Lafferty as the executor of her estate. She also stated that she regretted the adoption of Heffner, who should not be allowed to inherit from Duke’s estate or the two trust funds set up by Duke’s father.

After a knee operation in July, 1993, she suffered a stroke, was hospitalized, and was put on feeding and breathing tubes. After returning home in September, 1993, she was an invalid and had to be heavily sedated with high doses of morphine. Duke died on October 28, 1993, and was cremated within twenty-four hours. Her ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. Duke left most of her $1.2 billion estate to charity.

Probate lasted nearly three years. The litigation involved numerous claimants and complex issues. Duke’s nurse, Tammy Payette, asserted that Lafferty had hastened Duke’s death with high doses of morphine in order to keep Duke from changing her will. As Lafferty’s health deteriorated, he agreed to resign as executor of Duke’s estate for a cash settlement. Heffner sued the trustees and eventually settled for $65 million. Probate ended in 1996 with the establishment of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Estate and legal fees had already reached $10 million by 1997.

Legacy

During her lifetime, Duke was an extremely generous and often anonymous philanthropist. She left most of her $1.2 billion estate to create one of the world’s most richly endowed foundations. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation was established in 1996 to improve the quality of people’s lives by awarding grants and preserving Duke’s historic estates as educational, environmental, and cultural resources.

Her controversial life, wealth, and mysterious death entered popular culture, including the film and television industries. In 1999, CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System) presented the four-part miniseries Too Rich: The Secret Life of Doris Duke, starring Lauren Bacall as Duke and Richard Chamberlain as Lafferty. In 2008, HBO (Home Box Office) broadcast Bernard and Doris, a semifictional drama starring Susan Sarandon as Duke and Ralph Fiennes as Lafferty, which received numerous Screen Actors Guild, Emmy, and Golden Globe awards.

Bibliography

Duke, Pony, and Jason Thomas. Too Rich: The Family Secrets of Doris Duke. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. A candid, inside portrait written by Duke’s cousin and godson. Includes illustrations and index.

Levy, Shawn. The Last Playboy: The High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 2006. Entertaining and revealing biography which includes the intriguing story of Duke’s relationship with Rubirosa, her second husband. Contains illustrations, bibliography, and index.

Littlefield, Sharon. Doris Duke’s Shangri La. Honolulu: Honolulu Academy of Arts, 2002. Showcases the architectural grandeur of Duke’s Hawaiian refuge and its extensive Islamic art collection. Includes illustrations and bibliography.

Mansfield, Stephanie. The Richest Girl in the World: The Extravagant Life and Fast Times of Doris Duke. New York: Pinnacle Books, 1999. Entertaining biography which includes details of her many friendships with the rich and famous. Contains illustrations, bibliography, and index.

Schwarz, Ted. Trust No One: The Glamorous Life and Bizarre Death of Doris Duke. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Written with Tom Rybak, a member of Duke’s personal staff, this biography explores her mysterious death and how she followed her father’s advice to trust no one. Includes illustrations, bibliography, and index.

Tingley, Nancy. Doris Duke: The Southeast Asian Art Collection. New York: The Foundation for Southeast Asian Art and Culture, 2003. A scholarly documentation of the collection, with beautiful color photographs throughout the book. Includes bibliography and index.

Valentine, Tom, and Patrick Mahn. Daddy’s Duchess. Secaucus, N.J.: Lyle Stuart, 1997. This unauthorized biography written by two former employees is a controversial chronicle of Duke’s life. Includes illustrations and index.