The Duke and Duchess of Westminster
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Les jeux sont fait. The games are done. Alea iacta est. The die is cast. The Rubicon? Crossed. In a twist that will leave socially ambitious society mothers grieving for what could have been, the country’s most eligible bachelor is now married. The ghosts of Christmases future will haunt their minds, replete with the finest wines in the world and family getaways to the Duke’s seat at Eaton Hall.
Onlookers need not be reminded of the Duke’s outrageous combination of wealth and status. The Grosvenors are a family with a healthy and long-lived connection to the royal family: the King is the Duke of Westminster’s godfather and the Duke is godfather to Princes George and Archie. He is a lifelong friend of William and Harry’s. Yet the Duke’s family is also one far richer than the royals, worth a stitch short of £10 billion at £9.878 billion. And by a stitch, I mean one hundred and twenty-two million pounds.
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So who is the winner of the Duke’s heart (along with his title and access to his vast fortune)? Olivia Henson, 30, was introduced to the Duke through friends two years ago. After dating for two years, the Duke proposed to her at Eaton Hall in Cheshire and the pair later shared the news with a casual photograph.
Little is known about Henson, whose online footprint remains minimal, having flown like a night owl into one of the most coveted bedrooms in Britain. One thing we do know is the nature of Henson’s career: she is a senior account manager at Belazu, an environmentally friendly B-corp which imports high-quality ingredients from across Europe. This is a betrothal of rose harissa, EVO, and preserved lemons to partridge, port, and estate-shot venison.
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The Duke, Hugh Grosvenor, or ‘Hughie’ to his friends, is known for being remarkably low-maintenance. ‘Hugh is quite low-key. He takes his roles very seriously but when he’s not working he’s relaxed,’ a friend told The Times. The engagement photo certainly seems a reflection of this. The pair appear in casual-wear in an un-grandiose, minimum effort approach. The picture itself looks like they asked a friend, passerby (or groundskeeper perhaps) to snap it on a phone.
The date of the wedding was 7 June, a Friday, with the ceremony taking place at Chester Cathedral – a picturesque venue with which the Grosvenors have long been associated. The cathedral itself is exquisite, with the unique claim of representing nearly all styles of English church building since the Norman period. Prince William was in attendance, while Prince Harry was not. This bitter twist was divulged last month – a hard pill to swallow for both Hugh and Harry. The pair are lifelong friends and Hugh is godfather to Prince Archie – but he seems to have decided that any further royal drama would risk overshadowing his wedding day and the moment of pledging himself to his wife-to-be. Most will regard this as a prudent decision.
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The Duke was thrust into his title (with the family fortune rained upon him) when he was just 25. This followed the untimely death of his father, the sixth Duke, in 2016. The Duke benefitted from the ancient custom of primogeniture, meaning that he won priority over his older sisters because he was the male heir. Those sisters are Lady Tamara, who is married to Edward van Cutsem, a close friend of Prince William; and Lady Edwina, who is a prison reform campaigner and married to Dan Snow, the TV historian. The Duke also has a younger sister, Lady Viola, who runs an art therapy business.
The Grosvenor fortune was in fact borne out of another marriage. In 1677, Sir Thomas Grosvenor was 21 when he took the hand of Mary Davies, 12, in what has proven a fantastic match for the Grosvenor family. Mary was the daughter of Alexander Davies, a scrivener, and had inherited substantial lands to the west of London from her great-uncle, Hugh Audley – a namesake of our present Hugh. (Hugh Audley was in fact, no stranger to a fortune. An early Warren Buffet-figure, he was a famous moneylender, who became the subject of a popular 17th century pamphlet called The way to be rich according to the practice of the Great Audley.) These ‘swampy meads’ to the west of the city have since become the Mayfair, Park Lane and Belgravia areas of London, priceless real estate now the jewels in the crown of the Grosvenor fortune. Over three centuries later, the Grosvenor Group owns 300 acres of this prime central London territory, as well as Eaton Hall, and investments in more than 60 cities around the world, including a chunk of Silicon Valley in California.
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As for education, Hugh’s was influenced by the terrible bullying ordeal his father suffered at Harrow. Gerald Grosvenor decided, as a result, to keep his children close to the nest. Hugh was taught at a local state primary, before studying at the small private school, Mostyn House (now closed) and Ellesmere College for sixth-form, where he never boarded but became captain of the football first XI. At school, Grosvenor met Harriet Tomlinson, with whom he was in an on-off relationship for some time. Close but not quite.
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He inherited the title and the family business worth £10 billion. But as the Duke of Westminster marries Olivia Henson, revisit this investigation, published in the September 2017 issue of Tatler, which revealed that Grosvenor has almost no control over the wealth that defines him.
After finishing school, Hugh was off to Newcastle University, where he studied countryside management. Quite characteristically of the Duke, scant evidence remains from those days – save for a few party pictures. The Duke’s 21st birthday, however, did not escape news attention, costing a reported £5 million and including sets by Michael McIntyre and Rizzle Kicks; security was reportedly so tight that guests’ cars were sealed with tape before being allowed in, in an attempt to foil gatecrashers. Prince Harry is known to have been among the 800 guests. At the time, Hugh told the Chester Chronicle, ‘The party was simply amazing – a birthday and a party I will never forget. It is the beginning of a new era in my life and I look forward to the challenges that lie ahead. In spite of his exuberant 21st, the Duke is known – like the negative of a photograph – for the splash he does not seem to make, particularly when compared with some of Britain’s other wealthiest young men.
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Henson’s education began at the private Dragon School in Oxford, before she was off to Marlborough College, where alumni include Kate and Pippa Middleton. She studied in Ireland, at Trinity College, Dublin where she got a 2:1 in Hispanic Studies and Italian. Because of the rule of primogeniture, Henson will know that if she and the Duke do not have a son, her husband’s title and estates will not pass to his direct descendant. In fact, such a genealogical twist is exactly what thrust the Dukedom into Hugh’s lap in the first place. His father, Gerald Grosvenor, only inherited the lands and titles when his uncle died childless. ‘I had a wonderful childhood in Northern Ireland. I was quite happy and content to have lived there all my life. I wanted to farm and take it all rather gently. It was rather forced upon me,’ Gerald once said.
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Hugh Grosvenor, then Earl Grosvenor, and Prince William attend the wedding of Edward van Cutsem and Lady Tamara Grosvenor at Chester Cathedral, 2004
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Hugh, the 7th Duke, is clearly a determined and motivated character, in spite of his pedigree of plenty. The historian, Andrew Roberts, now Lord Roberts, interviewed him in 2018 and reported, ‘For all his diffidence and charm, there is clearly also a good deal of will and determination to this young man, who has been suddenly thrust into a place of massive wealth and power, with all the responsibilities that go with that’.
After university, Grosvenor joined the family business, working across various of its many arms before spending time in San Francisco and Hong Kong. Seeking to broaden his experience, he also worked for a time for Bio-bean, a company recycling used coffee grounds. After the early death of his father, Grosvenor inherited the family fortune, paying minimal inheritance tax, as the bulk of the assets were placed in trust. He is now chair of the Grosvenor Group as well as chair of the Westminster Foundation, which the family use to disburse their charitable donations.
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Hugh’s father Gerald served for decades with the Territorial Army and contributed £50 million to the construction of the Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre for injured servicemen and civilians in Stanford on Soar, Nottinghamshire. Hugh recently added a further £20 million through the Westminster Foundation. At the start of the pandemic he donated £12.5 million through the foundation to NHS charities.
Having studied countryside management at Newcastle – and with responsibility for his family’s estates – Hugh is tuned-in to rural affairs. He has spoken of his concern about the continuing shift to urban living around the world, ‘The key thing — and this is as true in London as in any of these huge new Chinese cities that are springing up every year — is that it imposes duties on planners to protect the green spaces, the environmental sustainability and the essential character of the places. There will be tremendous pressure to cut back on those, and they must be resisted.’
OLI SCARFF
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Other rural estates besides Eaton Hall owned by Grosvenor include a shooting estate in Lancashire, a forest estate in the northwest highlands of Scotland and another hunting estate in Spain, where guests can shoot boar or partridge. It is said that an invitation to one of the Duke’s hunting parties is one of the hottest tickets on the society scene. The Duke himself is not an inconsiderable shooter, representing Great Britain in skeet shooting and spending a substantial amount of his time in training and competing internationally. In fact, the family have long been known for their shooting prowess.
The Duke presently divides his time between London and his Cheshire home. With Henson’s job at Belazu it seems likely that they will base themselves at the duke’s London flat – that is, if Henson decides to continue to work. If she does not, it’s fair to say there’s a safety net.
Today, June 7, the Duke of Westminster married Olivia Henson at Chester Cathedral. (See all the best photos of their wedding here.) To mark the festive occasion, we are resharing this story about Hugh and Olivia, published May 7, 2024.
When the Duke of Westminster visited charities in Chester today to see the projects that his foundation is funding, he found himself sitting next to an old classmate. Emma Thomas, who attended a local primary school with the Duke, is now a development artist with Cheshire Dance and began reminiscing with her guest about children’s birthday parties. “He looks exactly the same as I remember him,” she said afterwards. “We were just talking about the birthday parties we went to together as children, it was lovely to catch up a bit.”
The exchange was typical in tone as Hugh Grosvenor, the billionaire seventh Duke of Westminster, and his soon-to-be Duchess, Olivia Henson, visited three organizations funded by the Westminster Foundation. The Foundation supports multiple charities and organizations in Chester, and the visit came exactly one month ahead of the couple’s wedding at Chester Cathedral on June 7. Other than one remarkably casual shot of Hugh and Olivia released when their engagement was announced in April 2023, it was also the first time that the couple has been properly pictured together publicly.
Grosvenor 2023
The Duke of Westminster and Olivia Henson released this photo to announce their engagement.
After being introduced through friends around two years earlier, Hugh, 33, and Olivia, 31, became engaged at Eaton Hall outside of Chester which has been home to the Grosvenor family since the 1400s and is where Hugh grew up. He has multiple ties to the royal family, serving as godfather to both Prince George and Prince Archie, and he also took on a role at the King’s coronation in the procession. Attendance at his wedding is yet to be confirmed, but it is expected that Prince William will be there. With the King and Princess of Wales currently being treated for cancer, it is unclear which other royals will attend.
“I think next time we’re in here will be slightly more nerve-wracking,” Hugh told T&C today after watching a toddler music group from charity The Cathedral Music Trust. “But I’m unbelievably excited. I also just wanted to make it very clear how unbelievably helpful people have been, how supportive they’ve been so far which I’m unbelievably grateful for. Because I do realize that it’s going to be a big thing for the city. It’s going to be certainly a huge thing for us, so we’re just really grateful for all the help.”
Victoria Tetley / Grosvenor 2024
The couple visited the Small Sounds program at Chester Cathedral, where they will soon wed.
The decision to have the wedding in Chester was, the couple said, an easy one, with both of them quick to highlight what the city offers (he mentions the incredible racecourse and Storyhouse cultural building and she cites the amazing restaurants as her wheelhouse). “It’s obviously a place where we will live, where we’ll be building our lives together,” Olivia said. “And we’re slowly transitioning to move up from London and be much more permanent here and really putting roots down. So actually, yes it was a really easy decision in the end.”
Hugh’s late father, the sixth Duke of Westminster, once gave a candid interview in which he admitted being a reluctant heir to the Dukedom after his uncle died childless. He and his wife Natalia, who is godmother to Prince William, appear to have notably successfully nurtured four down-to-earth, socially conscious children despite their vast wealth. One of Hugh’s three sisters, Edwina, has forged a career in prison reform and all are heavily involved with charitable endeavors. Indeed, since becoming Duke of Westminster on his father’s death in 2016, Hugh has quietly gone about transforming the Westminster Foundation. Without fanfare, he has distributed multiple grants of hundreds of thousands of pounds to help programs that nurture under-25s across areas where his family has associations: Chester, Westminster, Lancashire, and parts of the Highlands.
“Before, our grant-giving was very much haphazard. My father saw a good idea and would like to back it,” Hugh said. “I looked at the Westminster Foundation and thought how can we make it relevant, how can I make it mine and what do I want to focus on. We went through a long process of asking various different charities what they thought was the need.”
Victoria Tetley / Grosvenor 2024
The duke and Olivia visited the Young Leaders program at Studio by Storyhouse.
“We were doing these roundtable events and everyone said that early years and supporting young people and young families is something that’s not often focused on enough because it doesn’t look good on the back of a glossy annual review. And I said hold on a minute, what do you mean by that?” he continued. “And they said well often if you get it right they don’t become statistics. And I thought well that is exactly what we should be focusing on then…I said look, if we’re going to support these charities I’d really like to build a relationship with them and back them for the long-term so we can get to know them and really start to understand what the impact that we’re having is.”
The Westminster Foundation awards partnership grants of up to £100,000 per year to fund long-term projects, such as the Young Leaders program which Hugh and Olivia saw today being run by the Storyhouse cultural center, now in its fourth year of funding. Kera-leigh, 19, completed the program two years ago and credits it with transforming her experience of education. “I’m a lot more confident and more open-minded,” she said. “It’s helped me make friends and speak to people I wouldn’t normally speak to.”
Annabel Turpin, Chief Executive of Storyhouse, emphasized the importance of long-term support that Hugh’s interest in young people in Chester is providing. “If you’re really going to do something transformational you can’t just fly in and out,” she said. “Unfortunately there are a lot of people who are really disenfranchised and whose basic needs in education, in life in general, are not being met. To have someone who is backing a foundation that really shows care for these communities is massive and is just enabling us to work with people who we wouldn’t otherwise be able to support.”
Victoria Tetley / Grosvenor 2024
The couple watched a Cheshire Dance Class at Storyhouse and met with some of the students.
In a morning of events that had hallmarks of a royal visit on a much more low-key scale, Hugh and Olivia first watched young children who are home educated take part in a Capoeira class run by Cheshire Dance. Then they met people from the Storyhouse Young Leaders before heading to the Cathedral. The Westminster Foundation has recently donated to the Cathedral’s Project Discovery initiative to enable them to expand their cultural offering. Adam Holloway, Director of Cheshire Dance, described the money given to them as “transformative.” “We have to pay the artists, we have to hire spaces,” he said. “So to come across an organization that just enables us to do what we do, which is reach out into the community and meet the demand where it is. That’s transformative for us, and over a five-year period is unheard of. So it gives us a real opportunity to plan properly and look forward into the future and plan a whole series of activities and groups.”
Town & Country Contributing Editor Victoria Murphy has reported on the British Royal Family since 2010. She has interviewed Prince Harry and has travelled the world covering several royal tours. She is a frequent contributor to Good Morning America. Victoria authored Town & Country book The Queen: A Life in Pictures, released in 2021.
Olivia Henson, who will become the Duchess of Westminster upon her marriage, was educated at Marlborough College, where Princess Eugenie was a contemporary. The Princess of Wales also attended the Wiltshire boarding school. Henson later studied Hispanic studies and Italian at Trinity College, Dublin, according to the Daily Telegraph. She now works at Belazu, a London-based business specializing in food products. The couple are understood to have met through friends.
Earlier this year, the Duke of Westminster was named the wealthiest person under 35 in the UK, according to the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated family fortune of £9.878 billion, placing him 11th on the overall top 50. His wealth has increased by £152 million compared to 2022, according to the rankings.
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The duke’s fortune is hinged on the Grosvenor family property portfolio. The origins of the empire date back to the 1670s, when
