Drue Heinz

Drue Heinz, who used her riches to fund literary prizes, support The Paris Review and start a publishing house, died on Friday April 6 2018 in Lasswade, Scotland, at Hawthornden Castle, which she had purchased in the 1980s and turned into a writers’ retreat. She was 103. Her death was announced by Heinz Endowments, a foundation established by members of the family behind the H. J. Heinz foods empire. Ms. Heinz’s third husband, Henry John Heinz II, known as Jack, was a chairman of the company. Ms. Heinz was born Doreen Mary English on March 8, 1915, in Norfolk, England. Her father, Patrick, was an Army officer; her mother was the former Edith Wodehouse. Doreen — who at some point changed her name to the more distinctive Drue — did not attend college. Her first marriage, to John Mackenzie Robertson, ended in divorce, and her second husband, Dale Maher, an Oklahoman who was the first secretary to the United States legation in Pretoria, South Africa, was found dead in his car in 1948. She had a brief acting career under the name Drue Mallory, cast in bit parts in three movies in 1950, and married Mr. Heinz in 1953. They remained together until his death in 1987. In 1993, as she neared her 80th birthday, she began a 14-year tenure as publisher of The Paris Review, the literary quarterly edited for many years by George Plimpton, who died in 2003. Ms. Heinz’s survivors include her daughters Wendy Mackenzie and Marigold Randall, five grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and three step-grandchildren. Her stepson, Sen. John Heinz, a Republican of Pennsylvania, died in a plane crash in 1991.