BARBARA HUTTON: BIOGRAPHY - BIOGRAPHIES - 2025

Barbara Hutton (1912-1979) was an American heiress and philanthropist known as the "poor rich girl." Her life was marked by being the heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the United States, that of the Woolworths, and by living in extreme loneliness.

From her tragic childhood - which was marked by the suicide of her mother when she was 5 years old and the emotional abandonment of her father - her lack of affection has always accompanied her. Therefore, her seven husbands were not enough to fill her life with love.

Barbara Hutton was one of the wealthiest women of the 20th century. Source: wikipedia.org. Image by © Bettmann / CORBIS

The tragedy was always present in his life, since his only son died in an accident. This ended up plunging her into drug addiction, anorexia and depression, which led to her ruin and death at the age of 66, only accompanied by her ex-husband, actor Cary Grant, perhaps her only true love.

Biography

Barbara Woolworth Hutton was born in New York, on November 14, 1912, into one of the richest families in the United States and in the world.

She was the granddaughter of tycoon Frank Winfield Woolworth, her maternal grandfather, who made his fortune with the Woolworth chain of stores.

Barbara's parents, Edna Woolworth and Franklyn Hutton, enjoyed the heirloom honeys while living in a suite at the Plaza Hotel in the so-called Big Apple.

When the girl was about five years old, the tabloid press leaked an affair with her father. Edna, completely humiliated and depressed by her husband's infidelity, took her own life. It was her little daughter Barbara who found her mother's body. From that moment on, Barbara's life was marked by misfortune and loneliness.

An unstable childhood

The girl went home to her maternal grandparents, completely surrounded by luxury in a mansion with about 56 rooms, but terribly alone.

After three years living there, her grandparents passed away and the girl was the heir to an impressive fortune for the time: about 150 million dollars.

At school she felt complex because she was not pretty or nice; the press even coined the nickname "poor rich girl".

At the age of 14 he returned to New York and lived for a time with his father and stepmother, with whom he got along well. However, her father considered her an adult and decided to free Barbara's fortune to start an independent life.

At 18, he topped the news by throwing a quirky debut party that cost about $ 60,000, which would be worth $ 1 trillion today due to inflation.

Throughout his life he was a lover of luxury and waste, such as jewelry, car collections and mansions.

Lovesickness

She married for the first time at age 21 with a Georgian prince, Alexis Mdivani, who was already married to a friend of the young woman, Louise Astor Van Alen.

Mdivani divorced and made Barbara his wife. The newlyweds had a very long honeymoon, of walks and splurges.

When they reached their home in London, the passion between them had ended. At the party her husband Mdivani threw to celebrate the wealthy heiress's 22nd birthday, the girl began flirting with Count Court Haugwitz-Reventlow, her lover, and later her husband in 1935.

From the count to the actor

Only 24 hours elapsed between Barbara signing her first divorce and remarrying. This time it was a simple wedding in Reno, to marry the Danish earl.

Installed in London, everything seemed to indicate that Barbara was finally happy. She lived surrounded by love and luxury, and in that context she had her only son Lance. While the mansion was all wasteful, the employees of the Woolworth department store in the United States were on strike demanding living wages.

For love, the woman renounced her American nationality. This, together with the poor conditions of its workers, earned it a fatal reputation in the press.

In 1938 she divorced the count, with whom she lived a relationship of abuse and violence, and returned to New York before the outbreak of World War II. However, the rejection she felt there forced her to go with her son to California; there she married actor Cary Grant.

Happiness lasted only a few years, because their lifestyles were incompatible and they divorced in 1945, although they always maintained a close friendship.

More loves of nobility, entertainment and science

In 1948 she married her fourth husband, the Russian prince Igor Troubetzkoy, from whom she spent a long time away due to health problems that kept her hospitalized.

At this stage in her life she was diagnosed with an ovarian tumor, which caused infertility and plunged her into old drug habits and anorexia nervosa. This ended their marriage in 1951.

She soon met her fifth husband, the Dominican playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, who made the most of her fortune. The relationship lasted only months and Barbara was already announcing her sixth union.

Baron Gottfried Kurt Freiherr was her new partner. They were married at Versailles in 1955, but the baron's predilection for men made the marriage unhappy, driving Barbara further into sleeping pills and alcohol.

Back in Morocco, he met his seventh and last love, the Vietnamese chemist Pierre Raymond Doan, married with two children. This character broke his family to marry the millionaire, but this love did not last either.

Death

Failed in love, extremely thin due to anorexia and addicted, Barbara had only her son Lance. However, in July 1972 the young man died in a plane crash.

Barbara was exhausted, emotionally destroyed, and bankrupt due to years of waste and mismanagement by her administrators.

She ended her days in California, ruined and alone with the company of Cary Grant, her only stalwart who never asked for money either during the divorce or afterwards. Barbara Hutton died of a heart attack while in the hospital on May 11, 1979.

References

1. "Barbara Hutton, the unhappy heiress" (July 19, 2017) in Revista de la historia. Retrieved May 20, 2019 in History Magazine: revistadehistoria.es
2. "Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth Empire and the misfortunes of marriage" (May 15, 1979) in The New York Times. Retrieved May 20, 2019 in El País: elpais.com
3. Ferrer, S (October 10, 2012) «Poor rich girl, Barbara Hutton (1912-1979)» in Women in history. Recovered May 20, 2019 in Women in history: mujeresenlahistoria.com
4. Hailey, Jean. (May 13, 1979) "Heiress Barbara Hutton Dies at 66" in The Washington Post. Retrieved May 20, 2019 in The Washington Post: washingtonpost.com
5. "Black Page Bárbara Hutton: The millionaire with sad eyes" (April 21, 2013) in La Nación. Retrieved May 20, 2019 in La Nación: nacion.com