Death of the Duchess of Vendome

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March 29, 1948


The Duchess of Vendome, sister of the late King Albert of the Belgians, has died at Sierre in the Canton of the Valais, Switzerland, according to the New York Times.

She was 77 years old.

The Duchess was born Princess Henriette of Belgium on November 30, 1870, the daughter of Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders, and Princess Marie of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen.  She was the younger of twins.  Her older sister, Princess Josephine Marie died at the age of six weeks.

Princess Henriette married in Brussels on February 12, 1896, to Prince Emmanuel of Orléans, Duke of Vendome.  He died in February 1931.   Their marriage was the "outcome of a romantic courtship on the Italian lakes.

Henriette was "famed for her enthusiasm for hunting and her skillful marksmanship.  In 1907, at Amerois, Belgium,  she "added to her popularity by bringing down a ferocious stag that was reported to have killed a woman."

The Duchess inherited one-third of her father's large fortune.

She is survived by three of her four children,  Princess Marie Louise, who is married to an American Walter Kingland,  Princess Genevieve, the wife of the Marquise de Chaponay-Morance and Prince Charles Philippe, Duke of Nemours,  who is also married to an American, Marguerite Watson, and two grandchildren:  Prince Gaetano of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, the only child of Princess Marie Louise's first marriage to Prince Philippe of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, which ended in divorce in 1925,  and Henryanne de Chaponay-Morance.

  The late Duchess's second daughter, Princess Sophie, died in 1928.   A grandson Pierre de Chapanoy-Morance was killed in action at age 18 in 1943.  Prince Gaetano is married to Briton Olivia Yarrow, who is expecting their first child in April.