Lee Radziwill

Lee Radziwill, the free-spirited former princess who shared the qualities of wealth, social status and ambition with her older sister, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, but who struggled as an actor, decorator and writer to share her sister’s aura of success, died on Friday February 15 2019 at her home in Manhattan. She was 85. Her daughter, Anna Christina Radziwill, confirmed the death, citing natural causes. Mrs. Radziwill, the wife of a Polish émigré nobleman, Prince Stanislas Radziwill, was an international socialite and fashion icon who for years was on lists of the world’s best-dressed women. Mrs. Radziwill had been close to her sister, sharing holidays and family gatherings; attending state functions; visiting the White House; hosting the Kennedys at the Radziwill townhouse in London; and, notably, taking a monthlong 1962 vacation with Jackie in Italy, India and Pakistan. The Kennedys had named their firstborn child Caroline, after Caroline Lee, who had always been known by her middle name. Mr. Kennedy had been godfather to the Radziwills’ daughter, Anna Christina. Her relationship with her sister, which was widely reported to have been strained after Mrs. Kennedy married Mr. Onassis. Caroline Lee Bouvier was born in Manhattan on March 3, 1933, to John Vernou Bouvier III and the former Janet Norton Lee. Her mother was socially prominent and her father, a Wall Street broker called Black Jack, traced his lineage to French soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War. The parents were divorced in 1940, and Mrs. Bouvier married Hugh D. Auchincloss Jr., a Standard Oil heir, who had three children by previous marriages and two, Janet and Jamie, in his marriage to Mrs. Bouvier. In 1953, Lee married Michael Temple Canfield, the adopted son of Cass Canfield, chairman of the publisher Harper & Brothers. They lived in London, where Mr. Canfield was private secretary to Winthrop Aldrich, the United States ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. They had no children and were divorced in 1958. In 1959, she married Prince Radziwill, 20 years her senior, who had arrived in London in 1946 and made a fortune in real estate. The couple had an estate near Henley-on-Thames and a Georgian townhouse near Buckingham Palace. They had two children, Prince Anthony and Princess Anna Christina, and were divorced in 1974. Anthony died in 1999. In 1988, Mrs. Radziwill married Herbert Ross, the director and choreographer, whose films included “The Sunshine Boys” (1975), “The Goodbye Girl” (1977) and “Steel Magnolias” (1989). They were divorced shortly before his death in 2001, and she resumed the Radziwill surname. In addition to her daughter, Anna Christina, Mrs. Radziwill is survived by a daughter-in-law, the actress Carole Radziwill, and her half brother, Jamie Auchincloss. Her half sister, Janet Auchincloss, died in 1985.