Julia Rausing, art expert, philanthropist and second wife of Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing – obituary

Julia Rausing, who has died of cancer aged 63, worked as a secretary at Christie’s in Mayfair, rose through the ranks, working in Old Masters and valuation, and became a senior director of the auction house before becoming the second wife of the Tetra Pak heir Hans Rausing in 2014 – and a notable philanthropist.

It seems to have been experience of tragedy that drew the couple together. Hans Rausing had fought a long battle with drug addiction and became the focus of lurid headlines after the decomposing remains of his first wife Eva, a cocaine addict, were discovered by police at their home in Belgravia in the summer of 2012.

Rausing subsequently pleaded guilty to preventing the lawful and decent burial of his wife, received a 10-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for treatment.

Julia, too, had suffered more than her fair share of tragedy. Her brother died in childhood, her parents’ marriage broke down when she was 11, and her older sister, Isabella Blow, the flamboyant stylist and fashion editor of Tatler to whom she had been close, took her own life in 2007.

Julia Delves Broughton, as she then was, first met Hans Rausing in 2002 when he and Eva attended a lunch at Christie’s. They met again in 2006 when Hans, a serious art collector, called Christie’s in to make a valuation at his home.

It was Julia who supported Rausing during and after his time in the psychiatric hospital, and in July 2014 the couple married quietly at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, their nuptials being celebrated that November in a glitzy party at One Mayfair attended by a roll call of aristocrats and celebrities.

Hans Rausing had long been one of Britain’s most generous and self-effacing benefactors, donating to a wide variety of organisations, and friends of the couple predicted that their relationship would be defined by their joint efforts to give away much of his remaining fortune through the Julia and Hans Rausing Trust, which they co-founded in 2014.

In the 10 years from its foundation, Julia Rausing was instrumental in building the Trust into one of the largest philanthropic funds in the country, donating to causes across health, welfare, and the arts.

During the Covid-19 pandemic she established the Julia and Hans Rausing Charity Survival Fund, an initiative to provide more than £35 million of funding to help charities to keep going during a time when lockdown rules made it difficult to raise funds.

Julia Helen Delves Broughton was born on February 11 1961 at Crewe, Cheshire, the second child of Sir Evelyn Delves Broughton, 12th Bt, and his second wife, the former Helen Shore, who was Britain’s youngest female barrister when she qualified at the age of 21.

Her grandfather was Sir Henry “Jock” Delves Broughton, a member of the Kenyan Happy Valley set, best known for being tried, and acquitted, for the murder of Lord Erroll, who had been having an affair with his second wife Diana, a tale dramatised in 1987 film White Mischief. In 1942, shortly after the trial, Jock Delves Broughton took his own life, overdosing at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.

Julia’s sister Isabella had been born in 1958 and their brother John in 1961. Another sister, Lavinia was born in 1965 after John’s tragic death from choking aged two.

The girls grew up at Doddington Hall, Cheshire, the seat of the Broughton baronets. From the 14th century the family had owned an estate of 34,000 acres, but much of it had been sold by Sir Jock in the 1930s to pay off his gambling debts.

Julia remembered many happy times. “We used to do lots of  ‘Swallows and Amazons’-type country things – you know, playing in woods, building houses, rowing on the lake, picnicking, picking daffodils which we’d then sell on the side of the road and get into quite a lot of trouble,” she told Time Out in 2010.

The family had a flat in Cadogan Square and Julia recalled visits to the capital as a great treat: “It was hugely exciting. Daddy would take us to Harrods and we’d go to the pet department and they had exotic animals. It was something we did and it was something we did with Daddy. We worshipped him.”

She and Isabella enjoyed playing dressing-up, though she recalled her older sister’s attitude to clothes as very different from her own: “I don’t go into McQueen and think: ‘Oh my God, that’s an amazing, sculptural piece of fashion - I want to look like a contemporary installation today’... I was very traditional and Sloanie.”

The Time Out interviewer described Julia as “the epitome of understated chic; the antithesis of her famously exuberant older sister... bar the bird-like frame.”

Her closeness to her sisters was reinforced after their parents’ marriage broke down in 1972. In his biography of Isabella after her death, her husband Detmar Blow described how Helen Delves Broughton “lined up her children on the gravel outside the gardener’s cottage and shook their hands goodbye.”

Despite their aristocratic upbringing, Julia and Isabella, who both attended Heathfield School, Ascot, had to earn their own keep. When their father died in 1993 he left just £5,000 to each of the girls but several million to his third wife Rona.

Julia first came, reluctantly, to public attention in 1992 as a “glamorous blonde in a black mini-dress” when she was working in London as an assistant to John Bryan, the Texan financial adviser, at the time he was photographed sucking the toes of Sarah Ferguson, then still married to Prince Andrew.

She joined Christie’s as a secretary in 1996, eventually becoming a senior director working for Lord Linley in the Chairman’s Office.

Her marriage to the Tetra Pak heir clearly delighted friends and family members, and Julia was credited with playing a key role in Hans Rausing’s physical and emotional rehabilitation. “Julia has a very uncomplicated attitude to life,” an unnamed friend was quoted as saying. “Like her sister Issie, she is frank, funny and fearless. And like Issie she is untraditional in that she understands conformity but isn’t a conformist.”

After their marriage, the couple moved into a Grade II-listed property in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, that Hans had bought from Roman Abramovich.

Julia Rausing is survived by her husband and by four stepchildren.

Julia Rausing, born February 11 1961, died April 18 2024