Style icon Lee Radziwill died on Friday, February 15, according to WWD. She was 85 years old.
The socialite, who was born Caroline Lee Bouvier, was related to political royalty, shook hands with the Hollywood elite, married a prince and even had connections to a Bravo personality.
The public relations executive was the younger sister of late former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and sister-in-law of late President John F. Kennedy. The Kennedys’ daughter, Caroline, was named after Radziwill.
The interior decorator, whose long list of famous friends included writer Truman Capote and artist Andy Warhol, once went by the name Princess Lee Radziwill, as she wed Polish aristocrat Prince Stanislaw Albrecht Radziwill in 1959. They divorced in 1974. (She was also married to publishing executive Michael Temple Canfield from 1953 to 1959 and film director Herbert Ross from 1988 to 2001. Ross died later that same year.)
As for the Laura actress’ connections to Bravo, she was the mother of TV executive Anthony “Tony” Radziwill. Before he passed away from cancer in August 1999, he was married to Carole Radziwill, one of the stars of The Real Housewives of New York City. The two wed in 1994.
“I don’t consider myself part of the Kennedy family,” Carole, 55, told The Daily Beast in 2012. “It’s almost like a little point of honor. I’m a DiFalco at the end of the day. An Italian-American from upstate New York. I never call myself a Kennedy cousin. In fact, when I signed my contract with Bravo, I made it very clear that they were not allowed in promos to refer to me as a Kennedy cousin. I’m not that person. I don’t feel it.”
The RHONY star also said that she didn’t see her famed mother-in-law as much as she would’ve liked. “The thing about Lee is that not only is she an unbelievably beautiful woman, she’s one of the most curious women I’ve ever met,” Carole said at the time. “I don’t think she would understand reality TV, but if you look at her life, she was always doing something interesting and different. She was a decorator, she was even an actress on stage for a while, she worked in fashion, she had so many different interests and lives and careers. So I think she would be bemused.”
Lee is survived by daughter Anna Christina “Tina” Radziwill.
