Lee Radziwill

Overview

Born
March 3, 1933 · New York City, New York, USA
Died
February 15, 2019 · Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA (undisclosed)
Birth name
Caroline Lee Bouvier

Mini bio

Caroline Lee Bouvier was born on March 3, 1933 in New York to Janet Norton Lee and John Vernou "Black Jack" Bouvier III. She was the younger sister of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Caroline, called Lee after her maternal grandfather James Thomas Lee, lived in posh penthouse apartments until her parents split up when she was only a couple of years old. Several years after that her mother married Hugh Dudley Auchincloss, and she got two stepbrothers and a stepsister, as well as a half-brother and half-sister.

During her childhood, she attended boarding schools, including Miss Porter's, a famous boarding school which her sister had also attended. As a graduation present, Jackie took her on a trip to Europe for a summer before going to college. Around this time she met the man that she was to marry at age 20 in 1953, Michael Temple Canfield. That same year, the Canfields were best man and matron of honor at the marriage of Lee's sister Jackie to then-U.S. Senator (and future U.S. President) John F. Kennedy.

The Canfields moved to England were they lived for several years before Lee met an exiled Polish nobleman named Stash Radziwill. In 1958 they decided to divorce their spouses, and, on March 19, 1959, they married. Their son Anthony was born five months later in Switzerland. In 1960, they welcomed daughter, Anna Christina, called Tina, whose godfather was the newly elected President, John F. Kennedy. A year later, the Radziwills wed in a Catholic ceremony that they could not have had, had it not been for Lee's brother-in-law, the President, who intervened to make it possible. The marriage was ultimately not successful and they divorced in 1974. In the 30 years since her divorce Lee has lived quietly in England. In 1994, she lost her only sibling, her sister Jackie, to cancer. Five years later, her son Anthony, also died of cancer, and her nephew John Kennedy Jr. and his wife and sister-in-law were killed when the same plane being piloted by her nephew crashed in New England.
- IMDb mini biography by: Julie G Workman