Leonore Annenberg, U.S. chief of protocol under President Reagan, widow of former publisher and U.S. Ambassador to Britain Walter H. Annenberg, and steward of the couple's massive philanthropy, died today at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
She had been in declining health, making fewer appearances at the charitable events that were a constant in her civic life. Mrs. Annenberg was 91.
Mrs. Annenberg, who became an equal partner in the family's charitable legacy over the course of her long marriage, assumed control of the Annenberg Foundation in Radnor upon the death of her husband in October 2002. Since its creation in 1989, the foundation has given away $4.2 billion to cultural, educational and medical institutions. Her estimated worth was valued at $1.7 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
In 2007, Mrs. Annenberg accepted the Philadelphia Award, the city's highest civic honor, in a ceremony at the Academy of Music, making the Annenbergs the first regional couple so honored in separate years. Her husband received the award in 1993.
"The University of Pennsylvania would not be what it is today if not for the generosity of Walter and Lee Annenberg," said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, her posts as director of Penn's Annenberg Public Policy Center and former dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at Penn reflective of those gifts. The couple also bestowed schools at the University of Southern California and Brown.
"As my father Walter H. Annenberg would have wished, the Annenberg Foundation will carry our family's commitment to philanthropy into the future," said Mrs. Annenberg's stepdaughter Wallis. "We honor both Ambassador and Mrs. Annenberg by ensuring the foundation's health and vitality to serve the community for generations to come."
As recently as last month, despite declining health, Mrs. Annenberg met with Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a close friend, to discuss teaching the U.S. Constitution to school children, one of myriad Annenberg-funded programs in civic engagement.
Under Mrs. Annenberg's leadership, the Annenberg Foundation, made regional grants to the Art Museum, the National Constitution Center, and the University of Pennsylvania.
The foundation pledged $10 million to keep Thomas Eakins' masterwork The Gross Clinic in Philadelphia, and committed $30 million to relocate the Barnes Foundation to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.
The Annenbergs' largesse, in the form of substantial gifts to scores of charitable institutions here and across the country, made them the region's most renowned and consistent benefactors for half a century.
The couple's names are affixed to institutions in the United States and Britain, where Walter Annenberg served as ambassador under President Nixon from 1969 to 1974 and Mrs. Annenberg oversaw the restoration of Winfield House, the ambassadorial residence in London, subsidized with $1 million of their own funds.
CHARITY WORK
During her lifetime, Mrs. Annenberg sat on the boards of the nation's most prestigious philanthropies devoted to the arts and education, and received honorary degrees from the Penn, La Salle University and Brown University.
Mrs. Annenberg was the rare individual to be an active trustee of arguably the city's three most prestigious charitable boards - the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Philadelphia Orchestra and Penn - and consistently among the largest donors to those institutions. The Annenberg name is everywhere on the Penn campus, rivaled only by that of the school's founder, Benjamin Franklin.
"She really cared very deeply about the history and the culture of the city," said the late Philadelphia Museum of Art director Anne d'Harnoncourt in 2006. "There really wasn't another couple like them. We owe them a great deal."
Mrs. Annenberg was a close friend of former Secretary of State Colin Powell - who called her "Mom" - of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, who celebrated New Year's Eve at Sunnylands with the Annenbergs and Frank and Barbara Sinatra.
The Annenbergs' 25,000-square-foot Palm Springs-area residence, decorated with Impressionist paintings and Fabergé eggs, boasts a living room the size of a grand hotel lobby. Situated on 650 manicured acres that included a private golf course, Sunnylands was not so much an estate as a principality in the desert.
"She never took herself too seriously," said her friend retired federal Judge Arlin M. Adams. "She was always more concerned about people who had less than her."
Mrs. Annenberg was known for "small acts of unexpected kindness. She was genuinely a nice person," Jamieson said, forever penning notes on her trademark yellow stationary. "She was so gracious and attentive to the things that interested her. Being with the Annenbergs was a special experience. The attention to detail and graciousness beyond what was ordinarily done."
"She was a funny and lively conversationalist, and it was the conversation you remember about being at their home," d'Harnoncourt once recalled. "She understood the art of being a great hostess." D'Harnoncourt called Inwood - their long-time, 13-acre Wynnewood home, which Mrs. Annenberg sold to Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie in 2007- "not fancy but beautiful."
Leonore Annenberg.


La milliardaire, philanthrope et ancienne Chef du Protocole des États-Unis Leonore Annenberg est morte le jeudi 12 mars 2009, au Centre Médical Eisenhower de Rancho Mirage en Californie. La veuve de magnat de l'édition Walter Annenberg était âgé de 91 ans. Elle est décédée de mort naturelle selon un représentant de la famille Annenberg.
 Annenberg fut Chef de Protocole sous la présidence de Ronald Reagan, de 1981 à 1982. La famille milliardaire est connue pour avoir fait d'importants dons en faveur des arts, de la culture, de la santé et de l'éducation par l'intermédiaire de la Fondation Annenberg, créée en 1989.