Ruth Lilly

Her great-grandfather, Colonel Eli Lilly, founded Eli Lilly and Company in 1876.

Her grandfather, Josiah K. Lilly Sr., succeeded Colonel Lilly as president of the pharmaceutical company in 1898 and became chairman of the board in 1932.

Her father, Josiah K. Lilly Jr., joined the family firm in 1914 and served as its president (1948–53) and chairman of the board (1953–66).

Ruth Lilly (August 2, 1915 – December 30, 2009) was an American philanthropist, the last surviving great-grandchild of Eli Lilly, founder of the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical firm, and heir to the Lilly family fortune.

A lifelong resident of Indianapolis, Indiana, Ruth Lilly is estimated to have given away nearly $800 million of her inheritance during her lifetime, mostly in support of the arts, education, health, and environmental causes in Indianapolis and in Indiana.

Ruth Lilly, the daughter of Ruth (née Brinkmeyer) and Josiah K. Lilly Jr., was born on August 2, 1915, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

She was elder of their two children.

She enjoyed reading poetry and had written it since the mid-1930s.

Although Lilly had submitted her poems to Poetry magazine for years, they were never accepted for publication.

However, the rejections did not deter her support of the magazine and its publisher.

In December 1932, while Lilly was a teen, her parents purchased a French chateau-style home that became known as Oldfields.

She graduated from Indianapolis's Tudor Hall School, a private school for girls, in 1933.

She also attended Herron School of Art in Indianapolis.

Her brother, J. K. (Joe) III, joined the family business in 1939, but resigned from the firm in 1948 and did not succeed his father as president.

In 1941 Lilly married Guernsey van Riper Jr., an author and the son of an Indianapolis advertising executive.

Lilly and her brother donated Oldfields and its landscaped grounds to the Art Association of Indianapolis in 1967.

Lilly's cousin, Evelyn Lilly Lutz, the only surviving child of Evelyn (Fortune) and Eli Lilly Jr., died in 1970.

Ruth and her brother grew up in Indianapolis, where she remained a lifelong resident.

They divorced in 1981 and had no children.

Lilly lived a life of quiet seclusion.

News sources, including the Indianapolis Star, reported that Lilly suffered from depression for much of her life.

The Poetry Foundation's Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize of $100,000 has been awarded annually since 1986 to honor a living U.S. poet whose lifetime accomplishments warrant extraordinary recognition.

It was also reported that when Lilly was in her early seventies her health improved after she began taking Prozac, an antidepressant her family's pharmaceutical firm brought to market in 1988.

During her lifetime it is estimated that Lilly donated more than $800 million, an estimated $10 million annually, to charitable causes and arts organizations.

Most of the recipients of her gifts were based in Indiana and her hometown of Indianapolis.

Lilly's philanthropy fell into four major areas of interest: education, literature and the arts, disease prevention and suppression, and health education and health care.

Rather than focusing on a specific area, she gave directly to a variety of causes, although she had a particular interest in poetry.

Ruth became the last surviving great-grandchild of Colonel Lilly in 1995 on the death of her brother and heiress to the Lilly family's pharmaceutical fortune.

Lilly made major direct donations to organizations in addition to gifts made through the Lilly Endowment, her family's private foundation, and in conjunction with the Ruth Lilly Philanthropic Foundation, the charitable organization established in her name in 2002.

Both of these foundations continue Lilly's legacy of charitable support.

Lilly's major gifts include those to the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation, Americans for the Arts in Washington, D.C., and Indiana University, especially its programs and buildings on the Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis campus.

In 2002 alone, when Lilly's estate was valued at more than $1 billion, she donated "nearly $500 million to charitable and arts-related groups."

The donations included an unexpected pledge valued at $100 million, mostly in Eli Lilly and Company stock, to Chicago-based Poetry magazine in November 2002.

At the time of Lilly's headline-making donation, the monthly publication had a circulation of approximately 12,000 and its non-profit publisher, the Modern Poetry Association, had a four-person staff and an annual budget of less than $700,000.

Soon afterwards the association was renamed the Poetry Foundation.

The same year that Lilly made the major donation to Poetry magazine, she also pledged two other large gifts.

One valued at $120 million was made to Americans for the Arts, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group.

Lilly also made a gift valued at $150 million to the Lilly Endowment, Inc., the Lilly family's charitable foundation.

Poetry had been one of Lilly's long time interests.

Lilly had made previous donations to the magazine before her major donation in 2002.