Helen Gurley Brown

Cosmopolitan magazine founder Helen Gurley Brown is donating $30 million to Stanford and Columbia universities to create a bicoastal media innovation laboratory, the universities and Hearst Corp. announced Monday. The gift honors Brown's late husband, producer David Brown, a graduate of Stanford and of Columbia's journalism school. The David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute for Media Innovation will be housed on both campuses. Helen Gurley Brown, who turns 90 in February, wrote the 1962 best-seller "Sex and the Single Girl" and edited Cosmopolitan from 1965 to 1996. Her success came without the benefit of higher education. "She'd like to provide that opportunity to other young people since she never had it," said Eve Burton, a vice president and general counsel of Hearst. David Brown died in 2010 at age 93. He and partner Richard D. Zanuck were the producers of Hollywood hits including "Jaws" and "Driving Miss Daisy." Brown began his career as a journalist and was the managing editor of Cosmopolitan before his wife's tenure.