1727) Arabella Huntington

Arabella Duval Huntington (née Yarrington; c. 1850/1851 – 1924). American philanthropist and once known as the richest woman in the country, as a result of inheritances she received upon the deaths of her husbands. She was the force behind the art collection that is housed at the Huntington Library in California.

She was the second wife of Collis P. Huntington, an American railway tycoon and industrialist. After his death, she married his nephew, Henry E. Huntington, also a railway magnate, and founder of the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, in San Marino, California.

- "Her thick, wavy auburn hair cascaded down her back when it wasn’t pinned up."   https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a61730267/alva-vanderbilt-arabella-huntington-gilded-age-feud/

- "Arabella had red hair." https://insidethehuntingtonsstory.com/2021/08/31/arabella-huntingtons-portraits-tiaras-and-jewels/

Portrait by Giovanni Boldini

1726) Alva Belmont

Alva Erskine Belmont (née Smith; 1853 – 1933), known as Alva Vanderbilt from 1875 to 1896. American multi-millionaire socialite and women's suffrage activist. 

She was married twice, to socially prominent New York City millionaires William Kissam Vanderbilt, with whom she had three children, and Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont. Alva was known for her many building projects, including the Petit Chateau in New York; the Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island; the Belmont House in New York; Brookholt in Long Island; and Beacon Towers in Sands Point, New York.

- "By the 1870s, Alva was a vivacious young woman educated in Paris, fluent in French culture and admired for her dark red hair and poise." https://www.historyextra.com/period/victorian/gilded-age-new-york-alva-vanderbilt-secrets-to-success/

- "Her vibrant red hair is crowned with a tiara and she wears a thick rope of pearls rumored to have once belonged to Catherine the Great."  https://www.bookmovement.com/bookDetailView/73906/The-Social-Graces-Ren%C3%A9e-Rosen/1

 

1638) Juana Alfonsa Milán y Quiñones de León

 Juana Alfonsa Milán y Quiñones de León (1916-2005). Illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso XIII of Spain, who had her from the Irish nanny Beatrice Noon (but some claim she was Scottish).
After her birth, she was sent to Paris to be educated by José María Quiñones de León, ambassador of Spain in France, great friend of the King and later his executor. The child was registered with the name Jeanne-Alphonsine Milán and her birth was placed in the capital of France. The surname has an uncertain origin. Some believe that it is a memory of the duque de Milán, one of the titles that Alfonso XIII used in his sentimental escapades.
She was endowed with great intelligence and a prodigious memory, so she acquired an extensive culture, learned to speak five languages ​​without an accent and to play the piano. Later, when she reached the appropriate age, she was sent to a very strict school in Grenoble where young girls belonging to the great French families were educated.
Juana Alfonsa always thought that the ambassador was her grandfather, although she also professed a certain affection for a very special friend, Alfonso XIII, who visited the faithful Quiñones de León a couple of times a year.
In 1936, when she was 21 years old, she found out that she was the daughter of the King of Spain. During the occupation of Paris she settled in Geneva and when Alfonso XIII died in 1941 she received one million pesetas, a fortune at that time.
She began to behave erratically and squander the money bequeathed by her father. However, happiness, like money, seemed to slip through her fingers. And so did love. Lovers followed one another. She had four children - from different fathers - whom she barely cared for. One of the children died in a French hospice.
In 1972 she was in Spain, where she was sentenced to six years of prison for falsification of commercial documents. In 1993, Juana Alfonsa was living in Madrid. Her father's fortune had long since been lost in the excesses of a life without direction. She barely received 50,000 pesetas a month (300 euros) from the administrators of her father's estate.
One day in 1994 she suffered a fall. The social workers and the people who looked after her managed to admit her to the Hospital de la Fuenfría in Cercedilla. There, given her condition as a patient with a long recovery period, she shares a corridor with terminally ill patients. She faces the human drama although she is happy there because she discovers that the centre was inaugurated by her father. She was never able to take care of herself again. In 2001 she got a place in a nursing home in Mirasierra. She did not go unnoticed: she frequented the cafeteria and even wrote some articles in Ecos de Mirasierra, the center's magazine.

 

- "Debió de ser un bebé robusto, rubensino, de piel blanquísima y pelusilla pelirroja como lo era el cabello de su madre Beatriz Noon... Según el historiador Ramón de Franch, el exilio especuló con que aquella joven de abundante cabello pelirrojo y ademanes refinados era la nueva amante del Rey." [She must have been a robust bay, ruddy, with white skin and red hair like her mother Beatrice Noon... According to the historian Ramón de Franch, the exiles speculated that this young woman with abundant red hair and refined manners was the King's new lover.] https://www.elmundo.es/loc/famosos/2023/05/02/6450c4ade4d4d8eb0f8b4576.html 

 

1619) Enid Lindeman

Enid Lindeman (1892 - 1973). Australian socialite and heiress.

She was the daughter of a wine merchant.

At 21, she married the 45-year-old American shipping tycoon Roderick Cameron. They had a son, Roderick, but soon after Cameron fell ill with cancer and died. He had left everything from his enormous estate to Enid, and she was now a millionaire.

When WWI broke out, Enid moved to Paris to drive an ambulance for the allies.

In 1917 she married the General Frederick Cavendish. They had two childre, Patricia and Frederick, but in 1931 Cavendish died of brain hemorrhage.

In 1933 Enid married again, this time to Marmaduke Furness, 1st Viscount Furness, a British shipping magnate and the sixth richest man in the world. The marriage was not happy, but by 1940, Furness was seriously ill from cirrhosis of the liver (a consequence of his overindulgence in drink) and died in the month of October in the south of France, turning Enid into a widow for the third time.

At the height of WWII, she managed to get back to England and while she awaited her inheritance from Furness to be settled she met an old boyfriend, the Anglo-Irish aristocrat Valentine Browne, Earl of Kenmare once the most famous gossip columnist in London. The two married in 1943 and moved to Killarney, in Co. Kerry. Eight months later, she was, once again, a widow after Valentine suffered a fatal heart attack. As he died without an heir, Enid, who was fifty-one at the time, fabricated a story that she was pregnant. Remaining at Killarney she kept up the ruse for a year, during which time a baby failed to materialise.

Having been gossiped about the rumour that she had killed four husbands, Somerset Maugham nicknamed her "Lady Killmore".

In her old age Enid lived at Broadlands, a farm in South Africa, from where she bred race horses.

 

- "Standing almost six-feet-tall with red hair and emerald green eyes..." https://themitfordsociety.wordpress.com/tag/enid-cavendish/

 

- "The 21-year-old Enid, nearly six feet tall and with green eyes and red hair..." https://www.factinate.com/people/facts-enid-lindeman

 

 

1438) Henrietta Reubell

Henrietta Reubell (c. 1849–1924). Franco-American socialite and prominent figure in Paris society, known for hosting a lively salon at her apartment at 42 avenue Gabriel, including James McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde, Edith Wharton, and Henry James.

Her father, Frédéric Reubell, belonged to an Alsatian family with strong Revolutionary affiliations: her paternal great-grandfather, Jean-François Reubell (1747 - 1807) served as a president of the Directoire and her grandfather, Jean-Jacques Reubell (1777 - 1847) was a Napoleonic general. Reubell's mother, Julia Christiana Coster (d. 1884), was an American from a wealthy Dutch family in New York (she was a daughter of John Gerard Coster, who served as president of the Bank of the Manhattan Company).

The character of Etta Barrace, in Henry James' The Ambassadors (1903) is based on Henrietta Reubell. 

 

- "The painter William Rothenstein recollected a striking figure, with her bright red hair crowning an expressive but unbeautiful face..." https://books.google.it/books?id=vSJhEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT248...

 

Henrietta Reubell by John Singer Sargent

 

1427) Anne "Fifi" Urquhart Potter Stillman McCormick

Anne "Fifi" Urquhart Potter Stillman McCormick (1879-1969). Wife of James Alexander Stillman (1873 – 1944), a president of National City Bank.

She was the daughter of James Brown Potter and Cora Urquhart, a stage actress.

Anne married Stillman in 1901 and had four children.

In 1921, he filed for divorce accusing his wife of infidelity and saying that her youngest child was the son of a half-blood Indian guide from Quebec. She denied the charges and accused him of fathering a child with chorus girl Florence H. Leeds. Stillman later acknowledged his son with Leeds in 1926.

After five years, the court refused the divorce saying that he had misbehaved. His wife then filed for divorce but withdrew the contest after receiving a $500,000 necklace. They sailed to Europe to receive counseling from Carl Jung.

Fifi eventually divorced Stillman in 1931 and married Fowler McCormick, a man twenty years younger than her and a friend of her son, Bud. McCormick was the son of Edith Rockefeller, daughter of John Davison Rockefeller Sr.

 

- "Fifi was a stunning, vivacious redhead..." https://books.google.it/books?id=m4FahrcJmIEC&pg=PA142...

 

- "Fifi was a strikin red-head, with a flirtatious manner..." https://books.google.it/books?id=uCqVDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA134...

 

 

1388) Sallie Ward

Sally Ward Lawrence Hunt Armstrong Downs, also known as Sallie Ward, (1827 – 1896). American "Southern belle." Born into the Southern aristocracy of Kentucky in the Antebellum South, she married four times. After a failed marriage into the Boston Brahmin elite, she married three more times and became a socialite in New Orleans and Louisville, Kentucky. She was one of the first women in the United States to wear cosmetics, and she wore daring outfits.

She organized one of the first fancy dress balls in Kentucky and paved the way for wearing several dresses during a given society ball.

 

- "... a rounded figure with auburn hair, blue eyes and penciled brows." https://books.google.it/books?id=KO4RDgTVq2kC&pg=PA121...

 

- "Her hair was auburn..." https://books.google.it/books?id=8rIeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA159...

 

 

1211) Barbara Daly Baekeland

Barbara Daly Baekeland (1922 – 1972). American socialite who was murdered by her son, Antony "Tony" Baekeland. She was the ex-wife of Brooks Baekeland, who was the grandson of Leo Baekeland, inventor of Bakelite plastic.
She was murdered at her London home when her son Antony stabbed her with a kitchen knife, killing her almost instantly. Antony was found at the scene of the crime, and later confessed to and was charged with her murder.
The 2007 film Savage Grace is based on the life of Barbara and Antony Baekeland. Barbara was played by Julianne Moore. According to Barbara Baekeland's former lover Samuel Adams Green, the film features misleading elements.


- "One of his girlfriends was the vivacious, red-haired young fashion model Barbara Daly."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "All her life, Barbara Baekeland had been partial to autumnal colours: the rust-coloured skirts and bronze shoes she favoured suited her flaming red hair and fair skin."  https://www.whaleoil.net.nz/2016/06/photo-day-761-36/

- "Saul spoke of Barbara whiteness, her white skin, her Irish skin, white lovely skin, red hair..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "... a gorgeous ex-film starlet and model, with flaming red hair and porcelain skin, Barbara Daly Baekeland..."  https://krazykillers.wordpress.com/…/incest-and-illness-in…/

- "Barbara was stunning to look at and had glorious red hair - and a wild spirit."  https://murderpedia.org/male.B/b/baekeland-anthony.htm

989) Corina Kavanagh

Corina Kavanagh de Ham, née Corina Kavanagh Lynch (1890 - 1984). Eldest child of John Patrick Kavanagh Machierman (1863-1922) and his wife Elisa Lynch Byrne. Her parents had emigrated from Ireland to Argentina, where they became prosperous landowners.
Her name is closely associated with her financing the building of the Kavanagh Tower in central Buenos Aires, a 120-metre-high residential block comprising 105 luxury apartments on twenty-nine floors. The construction of the Kavanagh Building took only fourteen months and was completed in 1936. It was at the time the highest reinforced concrete structure in the world and was the tallest building in South America for many years. South America’s first skyscraper, it has been described as a hybrid of the Modernist and Art Deco styles.

- "Well, rumor has it that Corina Kavanagh, a young red-hair Irish girl had a romance with one of Mercedes Anchorena’s sons."  https://www.amazing-world-in-free-stock-pictures-and-photos…

The Kavanagh Building

887) Nellie Hazeltine Paramore

Nellie Hazeltine Paramore (1857 - 1884), known as the "Belle of St. Louis".
She was the only daughter of Captain William B. Hazeltine, a man who had made a large fortune in the mercantile world.
On the 2d of December, 1881, she was married to Mr. Frederick W. Paramore, a young railroad man of St. Louis, and a son of Mr. J. W. Paramore, who was president of the Texas and St. Louis Railroad. She died after giving birth to a son.
A play, called "Nellie of N'Orleans" was written about her life and starred Minnie Maddern Fiske.

- "Her red gold hair seemed to reflect some of the sun’s own glory..."  https://accessgenealogy.com/…/nellie-hazeltine-mrs-frederic…

- "... Guerin’s portrait of society belle Nellie Hazeltine was unable to “convey the exquisite tints of the violet eyes and Titian-red hair...”  https://www.ancestry.com/boards/thread.aspx…

856) Kate Chase Sprague

Katherine Jane ("Kate") Chase Sprague (1840 – 1899). Washington society hostess during the American Civil War. During the war, she married Rhode Island Governor William Sprague.
She was the daughter of Ohio politician Salmon P. Chase, who served as Treasury Secretary during President Abraham Lincoln's first administration and later Chief Justice of the United States. She was a strong supporter of her widowed father's presidential ambitions which, had he been successful, would have made her First Lady.
The marriage with William Sprague ended in divorce in 1882. Before the divorce, Kate was accused of having an affair with the flamboyant and powerful New York Senator Roscoe Conkling. According to a well-known story, Sprague confronted the philandering couple at Sprague's Rhode Island summer home and pursued Conkling with a shotgun and threatened to throw Kate out of a second story window.

- "The young, dazzlingly red-haired Kate Chase considered herself her father’s head booster in his quest for the presidency.”  http://www.mrlincolnswhitehouse.org/…/notable-visitors-kat…/

- "Miss Chase's bearing, creamy skin and hazel eyes, bronzed red hair, intelligence and graceful manners..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "Hazel eyes, auburn hair, and the marvellous whiteness of skin that usually accompanies this combination..."  https://www.pillartopost.org/…/retro-files-famous-american-…

- "The fine forehead was framed in waving, gold-brown hair."  https://www.costumecocktail.com/…/08/kate-chase-sprague-18…/

773) Patricia Kennedy Lawford

Patricia Helen "Pat" Kennedy Lawford (1924 – 2006). American socialite and the sixth of nine children of Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. She was a sister of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Senator Ted Kennedy. She married English actor Peter Lawford in 1954, but they divorced in 1966.

- "Pat was tall and athletic, with auburn hair and lovely blue eyes." https://books.google.it/books…

- "... she was striking just the same, with an angular face, red hair, cobalt blue eyes..."  https://books.google.it/books…

714) Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe

Marie Anatole Louise Élisabeth, Countess Greffulhe (née de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay; 1860 – 1952). French socialite, known as a renowned beauty and queen of the salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain in Paris.
The countess helped establish the art of James Whistler, and she actively promoted such artists as Auguste Rodin, Antonio de La Gandara and Gustave Moreau. Gabriel Fauré dedicated to her his Pavane. She was a patron of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets russes, and launched a fashion for greyhound racing. Fascinated by science, she helped Marie Curie to finance the creation of the Institute of Radium, and Édouard Branly to pursue his research on radio transmission and telemechanical systems.
She is one of the main inspirations for the character of the duchesse de Guermantes in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. Her husband, Count Greffulhe, is the main and almost unique inspiration for the character of the duc de Guermantes. A recent biography demonstrates - relying in particular on research into the author's draft notebooks - that Countess Greffulhe and her family, who inspired several of the characters in La recherche, played a major role in the genesis of the work and in the discovery of the "magic" name of Guermantes.
The colour of her eyes was unusual; as Mina Curtiss, who visited her, noticed, her eyes were like "the dark purple brown-tinged petals of a rarely seen pansy." 

- "She loved to wear green, which complemented her auburn hair." http://www.fitnyc.edu/museum/exhibitions/prousts-muse.php

- "A commanding redhead and noted beauty, the Countess was an important philanthropist who helped raise funds for the Ballets Russes and for a lab for Madame Curie." https://www.vogue.com/…/vogue-archives-elizabeth-taylor-aud…

- "Like the fictional Duchess, Greffulhe's garments were often covered in orchids or lilies, green or mauve-pink to accent her auburn hair, or shimmering velvets with printed motifs." https://www.theglobeandmail.com/…/marie-an…/article32363017/

688) Margherita Sarfatti

Margherita Sarfatti (born Grassini,1880 – 1961). Italian journalist, art critic, patron, collector, socialite, a prominent propaganda adviser of the National Fascist Party. She was Benito Mussolini's biographer as well as one of his mistresses.
She was the daughter of Amedeo Grassini and Emma Levi. Amedeo was a wealthy Jewish lawyer and businessman. He was a fiscal attorney for the Venetian government and a close friend of Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, later Pope Pius X.
In 1911 Margherita Sarfatti met Benito Mussolini and started a relationship with him. After losing her husband in 1924, she wrote a biography of Mussolini. This was first published in 1925 in Britain under the title The Life of Benito Mussolini; it was published the following year in Italy with the title Dux. Because of the fame of Mussolini and the author's familiarity with the dictator, the book was a success. Seventeen editions were printed and it was translated into 18 languages.

- "Attractive and green-eyed, with auburn hair, at eighteen she maried a Jewish lawyer forteen years her senior." https://books.google.it/books…

- "The lovely girl with red hair and green eyes and insatiable curiosity was raised in a protected setting and surrounded by love..." https://www.haaretz.com/the-jewish-mother-of-fascism-1.4856…
 
- "Ad attenderla trovava Antonio Fogazzaro, che amava sentire quella piccina dai capelli rossi recitare accanto agli affreschi del Tiepolo. [She would find Antionio Fogazzaro waiting for her. He loved hearing the little red-haired girl reciting near Tiepolo's frescoes.]" https://www.sassodiasiago.it/chi_era.htm

- "Fin da ragazza affascina per la sua bellezza fuori dell’ordinario, con quegli occhi grigio-verdi e i capelli color rame, e attira il suo temperamento ribelle, insofferente al perbenismo borghese. [She charmes people since she was a teenager because of her beauty out of the ordinary, with her gray-blue eyes and copper hair. And she appeals with her rebel temperament, intolerant to bourgeois respectability.]" https://donneprotagoniste.blogspot.com/…/margherita-sarfatt…

- " In the 18 years of Margarita, a beautiful red-haired girl with green eyes, contrary to the will of her father, married Cesari Sarfatti..."
https://www.forumdaily.com/en/3-revolyucionerki-2-salona-i-mussolini/

648) Margaret Brown

Margaret "Maggie" Brown (née Tobin;1867 – 1932), posthumously known as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown". American socialite and philanthropist. She is best remembered for encouraging the crew in Lifeboat No. 6 to return to the debris field of the 1912 sinking of RMS Titanic to look for survivors. Accounts differ on whether the boat actually returned to look for survivors, and if so, whether any survivors were found. During her lifetime, her friends called her "Maggie", but even by her death, obituaries referred to her as the "Unsinkable Mrs. Brown". The reference was further reinforced by a 1960 Broadway musical based on her life and its 1964 film adaptation which were both entitled The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

- "Who could have known that this small, red-haired baby would one day live a life of wealth, adventure, political and philanthropic pursuits and heroism that the Tobin family could have never dreamed?" http://www.hannibalmag.com/celebrating-molly-brown-on-her-1…

- "Mrs Brown was awake and glad indeed to see her old red head, as she sometimes lovingly called Molly, coming to have a good talk." https://books.google.it/books…

- "She was also notorious in the city of Denver for her bright Kelly green dresses that went well with her red hair." http://www.iaci-usa.org/…/Meet%20the%20Irish-American%20Hel…

619) Sybil Fane, Countess of Westmorland

Sybil Mary Fane, Countess of Westmorland (1871 – 1910), born Lady Sybil Mary St Clair-Erskine. British aristocrat and socialite.

- "She had perhaps the most perfect face. I can see her now in a Greek peplum impersonating Hebe. The grey feathers of a life-like stuffed eagle perched on her shoulder, set off the glorious sheen of her red hair" https://en.wikipedia.org/…/Sybil_Fane,_Countess_of_Westmorl…

450) Mona von Bismarck

Mona von Bismarck (née Strader; 1897 – 1983), also known as Mona Bismarck. American socialite, fashion icon and philanthropist. Her five husbands included Harrison Williams, among the richest men in America, and Count Albrecht Edzard von Bismarck-Schönhausen, a grandson of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. She was the first American to be named "The Best Dressed Woman in the World" by a panel of top couturiers, including Coco Chanel, and she was also named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame. 

- "She was absolutely fantastic and one of the most beautiful women I ever saw, with her green eyes and red hair..." http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/…/kentuckyian-counte…

- "... the red-haired, green-eyed beauty had begun life more modestly..." https://books.google.it/books…

- "She had wide set, green eyes for which she was quite famous, and striking red hair — a combination of Anglo exoticism that evokes fairies, or sirens." https://medium.com/…/salvador-dalis-nasty-woman-f484467e3555

445) Magda Gabor

Magdolna "Magda" Gabor (1915 – 1997). Hungarian-American actress and socialite and elder sister of Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor.

- "She stood 5'6" tall with red hair and gray eyes." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magda_Gabor

- "She was the oldest and the only red-headed of the three Gabor sisters." https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/3220/magda-gabor
 

- "Magda Gabor was said to be much like her father Vilmos, because she had his red hair, his fierce temper, was superintellectual and very much interested in literature." https://www.geni.com/people/Magda-Gabor/6000000007324512289

270) Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (née Spencer; 1757 – 1806). English socialite, style icon, author, and activist, sister of George John Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer.

- "She died eighteen years to the day after Georgiana, and when she died she wore about her neck a locket bearing one of Georgiana's reddish-gold curls..." http://www.cherylbolen.com/georgiana.htm

- "...she was built like a Tudor (tall, big-boned, and red-haired)..." http://gossamerobsessions.blogspot.it/…/history-vs-romance-…

129) Alma Maria Mahler

Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel (born Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler; 1879 – 1964). Viennese-born composer. author, editor and socialite. She became the wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler, architect Walter Gropius, and novelist Franz Werfel, as well as the consort of several other prominent men, notably painter Oskar Kokoschka. Musically active from her early years, she was the composer of at least seventeen songs for voice and piano.

- "He would write at their place in the country, from where a woman friend reported: 'There is something tremendous about the marriage of these two people'- she noted Alma with her flaming red hair 'like a beautiful beast of prey'."
https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/37029/page/7