Christina Onassis inherited one of the largest fortunes in the world and spent the rest of her life trying to find something money could not buy. Born in New York City on December 11, 1950, she was the daughter of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis and his first wife, Athina Livanos, whose own father led a rival shipping family. From the start, her childhood was marked by wealth and instability. She moved between Manhattan, Paris, and Monte Carlo, surrounded by yachts, private jets, and staff.
But her father was distant, and she always sensed that her brother, Alexander, was his favorite. Her parents divorced when she was nine, and her mother’s swift remarriage to Aristotle’s business rival, Stavros Niarchos, deepened the family fracture. By her late teens, Christina understood how her name changed every room she entered. People wanted access, money, or influence, and she found it nearly impossible to know who was genuine.
In 1968, when Christina was 17, her father married Jacqueline Kennedy. The union shocked the world, but Christina privately regarded her new stepmother with open hostility. The two never formed a close bond. A far greater blow came in January 1973, when Alexander Onassis was critically injured in a plane crash during takeoff at Athens Airport.
He died in February at age 24. Christina lost the person closest to her in the family. Her father never recovered emotionally and was diagnosed with myasthenia gravis in 1974. He died in Paris in March 1975 at age 69.
Christina was 24 when she inherited the Onassis empire, including the shipping fleet, the island of Scorpios, and a fortune estimated at between $500 million and $1 billion. Her first marriage, to 47-year-old American real estate developer Joseph Bolker, came in Las Vegas on July 27, 1971. Christina was 20. Bolker had been married four times and had four daughters, and he was the opposite of what her father wanted for her.
Aristotle was reportedly furious and threatened to disinherit her. The marriage lasted about nine months. In July 1975, only months after her father’s death, Christina married Alexander Andreadis, the son of a prominent Greek banking and shipping family. On paper, the match made sense, but the couple clashed over expectations.
Christina was running the Onassis companies with real authority, and the marriage collapsed in less than two years. They divorced in 1977. Her third marriage attracted global attention. In August 1978, she married Sergei Kauzov, a Soviet citizen who worked for a state shipping agency, in Moscow.
The marriage took place at the height of the Cold War and reportedly drew interest from the CIA and disapproval from Western governments. Christina moved to Moscow, adjusting to a life of scarcity and surveillance she had never known. The marriage lasted roughly two years. In the early 1980s, Christina met French businessman Thierry Roussel, heir to a pharmaceutical fortune.
She fell completely in love and married him on December 17, 1984. She gave birth to a daughter, Athina, on January 29, 1985, and friends described motherhood as a transformation for her. But the marriage was already unraveling. Roussel had an ongoing relationship with Swedish model Gaby Landhage, who gave birth to his child just months before Athina was born.
Christina knew about the parallel family but stayed, funding Roussel’s ventures and buying him a yacht. The divorce came in 1987, and Roussel later married Landhage. After the divorce, Christina focused on her daughter and built an active social life, particularly in Buenos Aires, where she found some degree of anonymity. Friends remembered her as warm and generous but increasingly fragile.
She struggled with weight fluctuations and relied heavily on barbiturates. On November 19, 1988, while staying at a friend’s home in Buenos Aires, Christina was found dead in her room. She was 37. The cause of death was acute pulmonary edema.
The evening before, she had appeared healthy and had attended a dinner with friends. She was buried on Scorpios, beside her father and her brother. Her daughter, Athina, was three years old. Athina Onassis grew up under the care of her father and Gaby Landhage in Switzerland.
She inherited a trust worth an estimated $2. 5 billion when she turned 18. She later married Brazilian equestrian Alvaro de Miranda Neto, known as Doda, in 2005, and built a life centered on show jumping, largely away from public scrutiny. The Alexander S.
Onassis Public Benefit Foundation, established in memory of her brother after his death, continues to fund scholarships and cultural programs. The shipping empire itself was sold to a Greek consortium in 1988. By the end of her life, Christina Onassis had been married four times, each marriage representing a different hope for stability and connection. Those close to her described a woman of genuine capability and warmth who ran a major company at 24 and made difficult decisions on her own.
But the loneliness that ran through her life remained as constant as the wealth surrounding it.