Her life was one of excess and extremes: from rags to riches, from Brazilian immigrant to wealthy socialite, and from fairy tale surroundings to crushing heartbreak. And while Lily Safra, who died quietly this month at the age of 87, spent much of her time in recent decades out of the spotlight she once embraced so heartily, her legacy of philanthropy, and of utter glamour, is for the history books.
Safra was a central figure in the 1980s and fit right in with an era that defined luxury and excess: a globe-trotting, four-times-married billionaire sophisticate with lavish homes who hosted opulent dinners with famous guests. As an elite socialite, Safra commanded the interest of gossip writers. But her more enduring legacy was as a generous donor. She and her late husband, Edmond, commanded sign space at some of the nation’s most elite institutions, including their own center at Harvard University.
Upon her death this week, the New York Times gushed that Safra had a “world class art collection” and world-class friends, including Prince Charles and the modern descendants of the Rothschild family. She had recently downsized to a smaller townhome (from one of the largest in the world) and spent her waning years in Geneva, Switzerland, where she died.
But Lily Safra’s life was as much torrid as it was gilded. Her most notorious brush with fame was not over her 34-carat diamond ring, which she sold at auction to help benefit charities, but as a central figure in a murder mystery involving the death of the late Mr. Safra. Lily was born in Brazil to a homemaker and a rail car factory owner. At just 17, she married her first husband, a hosiery magnate from Uruguay, with whom she had three children. She divorced him just a few years later.
She then met her second husband, appliance corporation head Alfredo Monteverde, in Brazil, where he’d fled to escape the beginning of Adolf Hitler’s pogroms in 1939. Alfredo committed suicide four years later, and Lily met Edmond Safra, a British banker who helped her organize her late second husband’s finances. Alas, Safra’s parents did not approve of the pairing, and Lily went on to marry a man named Samuel Bendahan. They stayed together just two weeks before Lily returned to Edmond, whom she married and stayed with for more than 20 years until his death in 1999.
With Edmond, who founded his own bank in New York, Lily traveled the globe, establishing bases of operation in New York City, Switzerland, Monaco, and the French Riviera. It was there they owned the Villa Leopolda, one of the largest homes on the European continent. It was in Monaco where Edmond died, locked in a bathroom that doubled as a safe room, during a house fire.
The fire was initially thought to be accidental, but authorities later noted that they considered the blaze arson. Although an aide to the family confessed to setting the blaze as a way of drawing the attention of authorities to a possible robbery and was ultimately convicted in Edmond’s death, Lily Safra never quite escaped suspicion.
She was an object of obsession, and some of high society’s watchers could not bear to believe the more glamorous half of the glittery couple, under her signature halo of perfectly coiffed blonde hair and her chic, designer wardrobe, was not hiding a dark secret. According to reports at the time, Safra laughed off the conspiracy theories, though it does appear she was able to prevent an alternative, fictional telling of her husband’s death from reaching bookstands.
After her husband’s death, and in his honor, Safra became a generous philanthropist, establishing a family foundation and liquidating her extravagant collections of hand-painted, antique Russian porcelain, fine art, rare books, and even rarer jewelry (including that 34-carat diamond, set into a ring). She furnished resources for medical research into Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s at facilities around the world, bankrolled children’s hospitals, and founded educational institutions. In honor of her family’s heritage, and that of her husbands, she funded synagogues and educational trips to Auschwitz and helped expand the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. And she was one of the single largest donors toward the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris after it nearly burned to ashes in a 2019 fire.
The Edmond J. Safra Foundation announced Lily’s death this week, crediting her with faithfully sustaining her husband’s legacy, but noted that Lily’s final years were marked by a deeper devotion to her family, including her grandchildren.
