Huguette Marcelle Clark
Huguette M. Clark, the reclusive cooper heiress who died at the age of 104 last month in New York, has left most of her $400 million fortune to charity. In her last will and testament is said that she leaves $38 million to her long-time nurse, $14 million to a god-daughter, and designating the bulk of her $400 million fortune to establish an arts foundation at her 24-acre Santa Barbara, Calif. estate which houses a shrine to her long-dead older sister.
Miss Clark who spent the past decades living in New York City’s Beth Israel Hospital left the biggest chunk of the remaining inheritance, a testament worth about $38 million, to her private nurse, Hadassah Peri. She also left Peri her collection of dolls and dollhouses, which The New York Times says could be worth millions. Before she died, Miss Clark, who had no children, bought Mrs Peri two flats near Park Avenue for her children, a house for visitors near her own in Brooklyn, and a holiday home in New Jersey.
Clark has left a painting from Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Except for the Monet, Clark’s entire collection of art, as well as her rare books and Stradivarius, will be housed at Bellosguardo, according to the will. She left not a penny to those relatives, whom she reportedly refused to see for years.
I intentionally make no provision in this my Last Will and Testament for any members of my family, whether on my paternal or maternal side, having had minimal contacts with them over the years, Clark’s will said. The persons and institutions named herein as beneficiaries of my Estate are the true objects of my bounty.
