Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans

Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans (February 21, 1920 – January 25, 2012) was an American heiress, activist, politician, and philanthropist. She was the granddaughter of Benjamin N. Duke and the great-granddaughter of Washington Duke, both tobacco and energy tycoons who helped start Duke University. Semans is remembered for her support and work towards promoting the arts and humanities through various philanthropic entities. Life Early life Mary Duke Biddle was born in 1920 in New York City to Mary Lillian Duke Biddle and Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., and she lived a comfortable early life as the daughter of wealthy and prominent parents. Her mother was an aspiring opera singer and her father a retired World War I captain and a US ambassador. As a girl she learned to play the piano and attended the Hewitt School in New York. When she was fourteen years old, her parents divorced and she moved to Durham, North Carolina, to live with her grandmother. College and later life In 1935 she enrolled at Duke's Women's College where she met Josiah Charles Trent, a then medical student who eventually became the chief of Duke Hospital's Division of Thoracic Surgery. Mary and Josiah married in 1938 and together they had four daughters. The next year, Mary graduated from Duke, receiving a degree in Art History. However, just nine years later in 1948, Josiah died of lymphoma, leaving Mary a widow with four girls.