Jane Engelhard

Jane Engelhard (August 12, 1917 – February 29, 2004), born Mary Jane Reiss, was an American philanthropist, best known for her marriage to billionaire industrialist Charles W. Engelhard Jr., as well as her donation of an elaborate 18th-century Neapolitan crêche to the White House in 1967. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1972. Family and early life Born in Qingdao or Shanghai, China, Mary Jane Reiss was the youngest daughter of Hugo Reiss (1879–1931), a prominent Jewish businessman who emigrated to the USA in 1896; he was an executive at his family's British fabric-and-small-arms wholesale firm, G. Reiss & Co. Ltd. and served as Brazil's consul in Shanghai. Hugo Reiss married, at The Grand Hotel in Yokohama, Japan, on 16 October 1911, Marie Ignatius Murphy (1891-1965), an Irish Roman Catholic native of San Francisco, California; she was a daughter of James. J. Murphy and his wife, Mary O'Gorman. Reiss had two elder sisters by her parents' marriage: Barry Jeannette Reiss, 1914–1970, later known as Reiss-Brian and Reis-Brian Madeleine Huguette Reiss, 1916–1994, later Reiss-Brian, married 1 Major Rupert Charles Frederick Gerard, and 2 Lawrence Hoguet Anthony Gerard, 5th Baron Gerard of Bryn). After her parents' divorce, her mother married French merchant and former theatre critic Guy Louis Albert Brian (1891–1955) in 1928. They had two daughters: Marie-Brigitte Brian (1928-), married Count Bernard de La Rochefoucauld Estissac Anne Patricia de la Le Rochefoucauld Estissac Edmond de la Le Rochefoucauld Estissac Paul de la Le Rochefoucauld Estissac Sabine de la Le Rochefoucauld Estissac, married Pierre Louis de la Rochefoucauld, Duc d'Estissac Sophie Rose de la Le Rochefoucauld Estissac, a nun Patricia "Bébé" Brian (1930-), married Jacques Bemberg Jean-Charles Bemberg Marie Bemberg Claude Bemberg