Florence Irving

Ms. Irving was the wife of Herbert Irving, a founder of the food services giant Sysco Corporation who died in 2016, two years before her death. The Irvings had been major donors to the Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York received a landmark $80 million donation from trustee Florence Irving and her late husband Herbert Irving, the founder of the food distribution company Sysco. It was largest individual gift in the institution’s recent history. Florence Irving also announced gifts of $700 million to Columbia University and the New York-Presbyterian hospital for cancer research. Their collective donations to these three institutions now total over $1 billion.