Lily Safra, a billionaire philanthropist who inherited her fortune from her banker husband, Edmond Safra, died of pancreatic cancer at 87, according to her spokeswoman.
Safra death on July 9 in Geneva, Switzerland.
Safra’s 4th husband, Brazilian banker Edmond Safra, died in a fire in their Monaco apartment in 1999. Lily Safra heads the Edmond J. Safra Foundation, a donor to organizations supporting education, science and medicine, religion, and aid. Humanity in 40 countries.
News puts his fortune at $1.3 billion.
His father, Wolf Watkins, is of Czech and English descent and manufactures carriages in the city of Mesquita, also near Rio de Janeiro, where the main street is call “Rua Mister Watkins.”
Lily moved to Montevideo, Uruguay, at 17 and soon married Mario Cohen; together, they have three children. The marriage ended in divorce, also he returned to Rio de Janeiro. In 1965, at 30, she married Alfredo “Freddy” Monteverde, owner of the Ponto Frio electrical network. According to a statement from spokeswoman Lily Safra, Monteverde struggled with bipolar disorder and committed suicide in 1969.
Her 3rd marriage, to Samuel Bendahan in 1972, only lasted a year before they divorced. She married Edmond Safra, said to be banker Freddy Monteverde, in 1976. Edmond Safra’s family hails from Aleppo, Syria, before moving to Brazil. He amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune through significant investments in the public holdings of the National Bank of the US Republic he founded and private banking businesses in Europe.
Edmond was diagnose with Parkinson’s in the mid-1990s and require full-time care. In December 1999, his nurse Ted Maher committed a robbery also set fire to the couple’s Monaco home to play heroes and save their wealthy boss, according to reports from witness testimony at Maher’s trial. But Edmond Safra and another nurse died from inhaling smoke in the bathroom while trying to escape the fire. Maher was sentence to 10 years in prison for arson.