Drue Heinz

Heinz died on March 30, 2018, at age 103, at Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland.

Her private foundation, the Drue Heinz Trust, had assets of $36 million according to its 2015 tax return.

She was the sponsor of The Royal Oak Foundation's Drue Heinz Lecture Series and served as the Foundation's Honorary Chairman. In 2002, Heinz endowed a Chair jointly held at St. John's College, Oxford and the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford called the Drue Heinz Professor of American Literature. She endowed the position of the Drue Heinz Librarian at the American Academy in Rome. She sponsored the Literary Evenings, Monday Night Lecture Series produced by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the Drue Heinz Study Center for Drawings and Prints at the National Design Museum. She was on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the MacDowell Colony, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the American Academy in Rome and served on the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art. She joined the board of the Howard Heinz Endowment in 1973, which later became the Heinz Endowments, and became Director Emeritus in 1994. She was also a board member of the Carnegie Museum of Art.

When the archives of The Paris Review were sold to the Morgan Library in 1999, Heinz paid the purchase price of $850,000. Heinz was close friends with the founder, George Plimpton, and was herself publisher of the Review from 1993 to 2007. Heinz was among those who helped found the paper in 1953 and over the years help fund it.

Heinz was named an Honorary Dame Commander of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in July 1995. In 2002, Heinz was selected as an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was an Honorary Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford.

Heinz began supporting the University of Pittsburgh's fiction prize in 1980. In 1995, she endowed the prize with a $1 million gift at which point it became known as the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. The prize publishes collections of short fiction through the University of Pittsburgh Press. "The revenue from that million has exceeded the needs of the press for publication and promotion of the Heinz books so it keeps growing," said Ed Ochester, editor of the press in 2018. Heinz also endowed the Hawthornden Prize for many years.

In 1971, with the encouragement of her friend James Laughlin, she co-founded Ecco Press. In addition to the literary magazine Antaeus, which she funded from 1970 to its closing in 1994, Ecco published many out of print books, and was one of the leading US publishers of poetry.

In 1970, she restored an old movie theater into the Heinz Hall for the Performing Arts, which was the founding institution of what would later become the Cultural District, Pittsburgh. Heinz gave $10 million to Carnegie Institute for the creation of the Heinz Architectural Center in 1990. Heinz also supported London's Tate Gallery and the Royal Institute of British Architects. Funds from her foundation help publish the Lincoln Center Theater Review.

Born Doreen Mary English in Norfolk, England to Patrick Harry English, an army officer, and Edith English (née Wodehouse), she first married John Mackenzie Robertson with whom she had one daughter, Wendy Mackenzie. Her second husband was Dale Wilford Maher, the first Secretary of the U. S. Legation in Johannesburg, South Africa (died 1948). They had a daughter Marigold Randall. In 1953, Drue became the third wife of H. J. Heinz II (1908–87), then president of Heinz company and heir to the Heinz fortune. With Heinz she became the stepmother of John Heinz (1938–91) who later became a Pennsylvania United States Senator.

Prior to her marriage to Heinz she was an actress. As "Doreen English" she had a small role in the 1948 movie Uneasy Terms, which starred Michael Rennie. Using the name Drue Mallory, she was cast in three 1950 movies, Please Believe Me, starring Deborah Kerr, Three Came Home and Breakthrough.

Drue Heinz, DBE (born Doreen Mary English; March 8, 1915 – March 30, 2018) was a British-born American actress, philanthropist, arts patron, and socialite. She was the publisher of the literary magazine The Paris Review (1993 to 2007), co-founded Ecco Press, founded literary retreats and endowed the Drue Heinz Literature Prize among others. She was married to H. J. Heinz II, president of Heinz.