Diane Marie Disney
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| Diane Marie Disney | |
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| Born | December 18, 1933 |
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| Spouse | Ron Miller (b.1931-) (Married in 1954) |
| Children | Christopher D. Miller (b.1954) Joanna Miller (b.1956) Tamara Scheer (b.1957) Jennifer Miller-Goff (b.1960) Walter Elias Disney Miller (b.1961) Ronald Miller (b.1963) Patrick Miller (b.1967) |
| Parents | Walt Disney (1901-1966) Lillian Disney (1899-1997) |
Diane Disney Miller (born Diane Marie Disney on December 18, 1933, is the only biological child of Walt Disney and his wife Lillian. She had, however, an adopted sister, Sharon Mae Disney, who was three years younger and died in 1993.
Diane is a noted philanthropist. Following her father's death, she has donated nearly five million dollars to various charities within the United States.
She and husband Ronald William Miller have seven children. In the early-1970s, Diane and Ron Miller purchased a vineyard in Napa Valley, California. Since 1981, they have operated the Silverado Vineyards Winery on a tract of their Napa property. Miller was CEO of The Walt Disney Company until 1984, when Diane's cousin Roy E. Disney supported Miller's ouster in favor of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells.
Diane was instrumental in pushing ahead with the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The project was initiated with a $50 million gift from Lillian Disney but got bogged down in wrangling over costs. Diane ensured the original design by Frank Gehry went ahead, and Walt Disney Hall finally opened in 2004.
Diane read her father's original dedication fifty years later to the day at the birthday celebrations of Disneyland on July 17, 2005, and is currently organizing the opening of The Walt Disney Family Museum at the Presidio of San Francisco.
She criticized the use of a lookalike of Mickey Mouse in a Hamas children's show called Farfur that she referred to as "pure evil."[1] Animation historian Michael Barrier reports Miller in August of 2007 sent a fax to a number of executives at the Walt Disney Company, denouncing Neal Gabler's biography of Walt Disney published in 2006 Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination as "a monstrous piece of libelous junk. My parents were not the people he creates in this book, and I cannot understand why all of you who aided and abetted Gabler in writing this book, and who praise it and promote it, can do so without suffering serious qualms."[2]
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