Lee Radziwill, born Caroline Lee Bouvier on March 3, 1933, in Manhattan, was a woman who spent her entire life trying to step out of the shadow cast by her older sister, Jackie. From childhood, the two sisters were measured against each other. Their father openly favored Jackie, calling her the more beautiful and the more gifted rider, a comparison that fueled a quiet but lifelong rivalry. Lee never spoke about it directly, but those who knew her saw how the constant ranking affected her decisions, driving her to be distinctive on her own terms.
Lee’s first attempt at independence came at just 19 years old when she proposed to Michael Canfield, a man she had met just days earlier. She later admitted that part of why she married him so young was simply to escape her family’s household and its pressures. The marriage lasted five years and ended in divorce. Her stepfather, Hugh Auchincloss, had warned her that Canfield would never afford her lifestyle, a prediction that proved accurate, though it was the marriage itself that ultimately failed.
While living in London, Lee met Prince Stanisław “Stas” Radziwill, a Polish aristocrat who had survived the collapse of everything he was born into. Their connection was immediate and profound, and in 1959 they married after securing annulments from the Catholic Church. The pope had to intervene personally to untangle their previous marriages. Lee transformed into a princess, a title that carried real social weight at the time, even though Poland had abolished its nobility and Stas had become a British citizen.
The life Lee built with Stas was glamorous and lavishly decorated by Italian stage designer Lorenzo Mongiardino. She worked hard to contribute to their world, often shaping the aesthetics and ideas that others got credit for. But the marriage brought her into the center of the Kennedy era, and with it, one of the most painful betrayals of her life. By the early 1960s, Lee had grown close to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, sharing a yacht trip with him and her sister that produced iconic photographs of the two women riding elephants.
Lee’s marriage to Stas deteriorated amid reports of his many affairs, and she heard the news of her sister’s intimacy with Onassis from Onassis himself. After her divorce from Stas, Lee attempted a career in acting. In 1967, she starred in a Broadway production with the role of the woman in the story, a part she believed she would excel in, until she discovered she had been replaced mid-rehearsal by Claire Bloom. The humiliation was public and stung deeply.
The following year, she appeared in a television adaptation of *Laura*, written specifically for her by Truman Capote, who remained loyal to her. She gave up acting after that, never returning to it, describing the failure as a chapter that caused her real pain. In her most candid public statement, Lee told T magazine that her time with Stas was the happiest period of her life. She had lost him to divorce and then to death, never getting the chance to see him again with the distance that time might have brought.
Lee’s third marriage was to American film director Herbert Ross on September 23, 1988. That marriage brought her stability after years of independence, a quieter life by the standards she was used to. She moved between New York and Los Angeles, finding companionship with someone who shared her experience of living a large public life. Those close to them saw the tension between two strong personalities, though the marriage provided a certain consistency she hadn’t known before.
She also worked for Giorgio Armani as a brand ambassador, a role she held for years and which suited her perfectly. Even in her later years, she was photographed and written about in respected publications like Architectural Digest and Elle Decor. In 2008, the French government awarded her the Légion d’honneur, one of the country’s highest civilian honors. When her sister Jackie died, the two sisters had reconciled after years of rivalry.
But Jackie’s will made a pointed final statement. She left $500,000 trust funds for Lee’s two children, but for Lee herself, not a dollar, not a single personal memento from a lifetime of shared history. Whatever closeness they had repaired in their final years, the will revealed that something had never fully healed. Then came the loss of Anthony, Lee’s son, who died of cancer in 1999, just weeks after the death of her nephew JFK Jr.
, who had been companion to Anthony during his illness. The timing was almost impossible to absorb. Lee continued to attend significant social and cultural events, remaining a fixture in the world she had always inhabited, though her life was marked by the search for something entirely her own. Lee Radziwill died on February 15, 2019, at the age of 85.
She left behind a life that was extraordinary, complicated, and entirely real, one that deserves to be told on its own terms, not as a footnote to her sister’s story.