Barbara Woolworth Hutton (November 14, 1912 – May 11, 1979) was an American debutante, socialite, heiress and philanthropist. She was dubbed the "Poor Little Rich Girl"— first when she was given a lavish and expensive debutante ball in 1930 amid the Great Depression and later due to a notoriously troubled private life.
Heiress to one-third of the estate of her grandfather, the retail tycoon Frank Winfield Woolworth, Barbara Hutton was one of the wealthiest women in the world. She endured a childhood marked by neglect by her father and the early loss, at age four, of her mother, who died from suffocation due to mastoiditis. Rumors have persisted that she committed suicide. This set the stage for a life of difficulty forming relationships. Married and divorced seven times, she acquired grand foreign titles but was maliciously treated and often exploited by several of her husbands. Publicly she was much envied for her possessions, her beauty and her apparent life of leisure; privately she remained deeply insecure, often taking refuge in drink, drugs and playboys.
Hutton was an inconsistent and insecure parent to her one child, exacerbated when the divorce from her second husband ended in a bitter custody battle, and she subsequently developed anorexia nervosa. Her son Lance Reventlow died in a 1972 plane crash, leaving Hutton devastated. A life of lavish spending, paired with exploitation by those entrusted to manage her estate, brought Hutton to the verge of bankruptcy before her death.
Born in New York City, Barbara Hutton was the only child of Edna Woolworth (1883–1917), the daughter of Frank W. Woolworth, the founder of the successful Woolworth five-and-dime stores. Barbara's father was Franklyn Laws Hutton (1877–1940), a wealthy co-founder of E. F. Hutton & Company (owned by Franklyn's brother Edward Francis Hutton), a respected New York investment banking and stock brokerage firm. She was a niece by marriage of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post, who was for a time (1920–1935) married to E. F. Hutton; thus their daughter, actress-heiress Dina Merrill (born Nedenia Hutton), was a first cousin to Barbara Hutton. Merrill related on A&E's Biography that for a time Barbara lived with them following the death of her mother and abandonment by her father.
Edna Hutton reportedly died on May 2, 1917, age 33, from suffocation due to mastoiditis, but rumor persists that she committed suicide by poison in despair over her husband's philandering, especially as the coroner decided that no autopsy was necessary. Four-year-old Barbara discovered her mother's body; the trauma haunted her for the rest of her life. After her mother's death, she lived with various relatives, and was raised by a governess. Hutton attended Miss Hewitt's Classes, now The Hewitt School in New York's Lenox Hill neighborhood and Miss Porter's School for Girls in Farmington, Connecticut. She became an introverted child who had limited interaction with other children of her own age. Her closest friend and only confidante was her cousin Jimmy Donahue, the son of her mother's sister. Donahue inherited a portion of the Woolworth estate with Barbara and also grew up to have notorious, and public, drug, alcohol and relationship problems.
In 1924, Barbara Hutton's grandmother Jennie (Creighton) Woolworth died and bequeathed to her $26.1 million (~$378 million in 2024). Another $2.1 million in stock from Edna's inheritance was placed in a separate trust – both trusts were administered by Franklyn Hutton. By the time of her 21st birthday in 1933, Barbara Hutton's father had increased her inheritance to $42 million ($967 million in 2023) not including the additional $8 million from her mother's estate, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world.
In accordance with New York's high society traditions, Barbara Hutton was given a lavish débutante ball in 1930 on her 18th birthday, where guests from the Astor and Rockefeller families, amongst other elites, were entertained by stars such as Rudy Vallee and Maurice Chevalier. The ball cost $60,000, a fortune in the days of the Depression. Public criticism was so severe that she was sent on a tour of Europe to escape the onslaught of the press.
She lived in the family home at 4 East 80th Street on the Upper East Side.
Popular poet Ogden Nash took note of Hutton's public private life in the following light verse:
Said Aimee McPherson to Barbara Hutton,
"How do you get a marriage to button?"
"You'll have to ask some other person."
Said Barbara Hutton to Aimee McPherson
1933: Alexis Mdivani, a self-styled Georgian prince, divorced 1935
1935: Count Kurt Heinrich Eberhard Erdmann Georg von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, divorced 1938
1942: Cary Grant, divorced 1945
1947: Prince Igor Troubetzkoy, divorced 1951
1953: Porfirio Rubirosa, divorced 1954