Helen Macintyre

Through her business, Macintyre Art Advisory, which she launched in 2007, she has become a major player in the art world and, despite an intense fear of flying, has flown to Qatar 16 times in 18 months, tapping into the Middle Eastern art market by brokering million-pound deals for the ruling dynasty. The means by which she elevated herself to this position reveal an extraordinary determination, energy and self-belief. After meeting Chase Untermeyer, the then U.S. ambassador to Qatar, she decided to put on an exhibition in the capital, Doha. Through Mr Untermeyer, she managed to attract a host of the country’s great and good, including the prime minister, members of the Qatari royal family and Sheikh Hassan bin Mohammed bin Ali Al Thani, deputy chairman of the Qatar Museums Authority, whom she charmed enough for him to act as the exhibition’s patron. She was the third daughter born to a Scottish father, James Macintyre, an artist, and Dutch mother, Wilhelmina, from whom she inherited her extraordinary Delft blue eyes. She had two elder sisters - Enid, her senior by nine years, and Stephanie, older by seven. At Edinburgh University, where she studied history of art, she became known for her love of a good party. It was at Edinburgh that she first met Boris Johnson, who was a journalist at the time. Her big break into the art world came soon after her graduation in 1996. She was interning at an art fair in Maastricht and met Richard Knight, the director of a company specialising in Old Masters. Impressed by her sales ability, he offered her a job at his new dealership Hall & Knight, where she worked until 2004, before starting her own company. Her relationship with Pierre Rolin, the boyfriend she initially believed to be her daughter’s father, began in 2006 after they met at a Red Cross charity ball. Rolin, a Canadian, ran his own company Strategic Real Estate Advisors, which worked mostly with Middle Eastern investors. Their relationship is said to have soured after Helen and Boris rekindled their friendship when he gave her an unpaid job as a fundraiser for a proposed landmark sculpture in the Olympic Park, the £20 million, 400ft Orbit Tower.