Huguette Clark

She was the second daughter of William A. Clark (1839–1925), from his second wife, Anna E. Clark (née La Chapelle; 1878–1963).

Her father was a former U.S. Senator from Montana and businessman involved in mining and railroads, who had largely amassed a fortune in copper mining operations in Butte, Montana and Jerome, Arizona.

He was also a railroad magnate and one of the founders of Las Vegas.

Her mother, the daughter of French-Canadian immigrants, was born and raised in Michigan, and was an aspiring singer and musician.

In addition to her older sister, Louise Amelia Andrée Clark (1902–1919), she had five half-siblings from her father's first marriage to Katherine Louise Stauffer: Mary Joaquina Clark (1870–1939), Charles Walker Clark (1871–1933), Katherine Louise Clark (1875–1974), William Andrews Clark, Jr. (1877–1934), and Francis Paul Clark (1880–1896).

Huguette Marcelle Clark (June 9, 1906 – May 24, 2011) was an American painter, heiress, and philanthropist, who became well known again late in life as a recluse, living in hospitals for more than 20 years while her various mansions remained unoccupied.

The youngest daughter of Montana senator and industrialist William A. Clark, she spent her early life in Paris before relocating with her family to New York City, where she was educated at the Spence School.

Huguette Marcelle Clark was born on June 9, 1906, in Paris, France.

Following the death of her father in 1925, Clark and her mother relocated from the mansion to a twelfth-floor apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue.

In December 1927, Clark announced her engagement to law student William MacDonald Gower, a Princeton University graduate who was a son of one of her father's business associates, William B. Gower.

The two married on August 18, 1928, at Bellosguardo, her family's 23 acre estate on the Pacific Coast in Santa Barbara, California.

The same year, Clark agreed to donate $50,000 (equivalent to $0 in today's dollars) to excavate a salt pond and create an artificial freshwater lake across from Bellosguardo.

She stipulated that the facility would be named the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge, after her sister, who had died of meningitis.

Clark was also a musician and painter, and in 1929 exhibited seven of her own paintings at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, located in Washington, D.C. She possessed an enthusiasm for the arts and was an avid collector of visual art, as well as antique toys and dolls.

She reportedly had a very small group of friends and was "skittish around strangers," spending much of her time in private, rarely leaving her residence.

She occasionally attended Christian Dior fashion shows in New York City, but only to find inspiration for clothing to dress her dolls.

After a short-lived marriage ended in 1930, Clark returned to her residence at 907 Fifth Avenue, a large twelfth-floor apartment that she significantly expanded to occupying two floors.

Clark and Gower separated in 1929, one year after their marriage, and divorced in Reno, Nevada, on August 11, 1930.

After her divorce, Clark returned to the twelfth-floor apartment at 907 Fifth Avenue, where she had previously lived with her mother.

Upon moving back in, Clark modified and expanded the apartment significantly, so that it took up the entire eighth floor of the building, as well as half of the twelfth.

The residence grew to a total of 42 rooms, including a 30 ft library, 40 ft drawing room, and 40 ft living room.

According to architectural historian Andrew Alpern: "If you stood with your back to the fireplace in the library, you could see out to Central Park through the living room window that is almost 110 ft away!"

Clark and her mother continued to maintain Bellosguardo, and during the Great Depression had the original home torn down and rebuilt "just to give people jobs."

Clark visited Bellosguardo regularly during this period, staying there with family and friends.

There, she befriended Barbara Dorn, the daughter of one of the property's caretakers.

An acquaintance recalled that Clark "hung out with rich daredevils who drove fast cars and flew rickety planes," but became close friends with Dorn, as both were shy and "hid in the garden."

She also meticulously maintained Bellosguardo, a large familial estate in Santa Barbara, California, although she never returned to the property after the 1950s.

Clark spent much of her life outside of the public sphere, devoting her time to painting, the arts, and collecting various antiquities, primarily toys and dolls.

In 1952, she purchased another property in New Canaan, Connecticut, but following the death of her mother in 1963, became increasingly reclusive.

In 1991, she was admitted to Doctors Hospital in Manhattan to treat various basal cell cancer lesions on her face.

Though she successfully recovered, Clark remained a hospital resident for the following two decades.

Upon her death at 104 in 2011, Clark left behind a fortune of more than $300 million, most of which was donated to charity after a court dispute with her distant relatives.

The events surrounding her estate and last years of her life were covered extensively by Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Bill Dedman, who co-wrote a biography in 2013, Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune.

The film rights to Empty Mansions were optioned by Fremantle, which is developing a TV series with HBO, director Joe Wright, and screenwriter Ido Fluk.

The book was optioned earlier by film and television director Ryan Murphy.

Although the 2013 biography Empty Mansions stated that Anna and William met while Anna was living in a boarding house in Butte, contemporary newspaper coverage emphasized that Anna had been William's ward: after Anna's father's death, "Senator Clark extended financial assistance to the bereaved family, and finally induced them to allow him to make the girl his ward."

Clark was raised Roman Catholic, the faith of her mother, while her father was a Protestant.

Clark spent her early life in France, living with her family at their apartment on Avenue Victor-Hugo in the 16th arrondissement.

When she was five years old she was relocated to New York City, where she was educated at the Spence School in Manhattan.

The family resided in a six-story, 121-room mansion located at 962 Fifth Avenue, the largest house in New York City at the time.