Mary Fairfax

Fairwater, the Double Bay home of Lady Fairfax

Mary Fairfax AC, OBE (born 15 August 1922) ^[1][2] is a Polish-born Australian philanthropist. Born Maire Wein, she became Mary Symonds on her first marriage and as the third wife and widow of Sir Warwick Oswald Fairfax she is known as Lady Fairfax. ^[3] She has been Chairman, Founder and President of the Friends of The Australian Ballet.

Biography

Fairfax was born in Warsaw and emigrated to Australia as a small child with her parents. She attended the Presbyterian Ladies College, Sydney. She was formerly the owner of several Sydney dress shops before her marriage to solicitor Cedric Symonds, with whom she had one son, Garth. She married Warwick Fairfax in 1959 and they had three children, Warwick Fairfax, Anna and Charles.

Fairfax moved to Manhattan, New York, in 1988. She purchased a penthouse known as Chateau in the Sky, on top of the Pierre Hotel, Fifth Avenue, for US$12,000,000. She returned to Australia in 1999, feeling she had never been entirely accepted into New York society. The penthouse in Manhattan eventually became New York's most expensive penthouse and was put up for sale in 2013 for an asking price of US$125,000,000. Previous tenants had included John Paul Getty, Elizabeth Taylor, Yves Saint-Laurent and Mohamed al-Fayed.^[4]

After the death of her husband Sir Warwick in 1987, Fairfax continued to live in the family home, Fairwater, which had been owned by the Fairfax family since 1900.^[5]

Wealth

Fairfax's personal wealth in 2011 was estimated by Business Review Weekly at $275 million. Her assets include the New South Wales residential land development, Harrington Park, near Camden. Harrington Park was the name of the cattle property once owned by Sir Warwick and Lady Fairfax.

References