Caroline Rose Hunt (January 8, 1923 – November 13, 2018) was an American heiress and hotelier who was at one time the wealthiest woman in the United States.Cheryl Hall
"Once considered America's richest woman, Caroline Hunt offers a rare look at her famous Dallas family,"
''The Dallas Morning News'', November 3, 2017. She is known for having been the founder of

Rosewood Hotels & Resorts Rosewood Hotels & Resorts is an international luxury hotel and resort company operating 28 hotels in 16 countries, currently owned by Hong Kong-based Rosewood Hotel Group (formerly New World Hospitality and rebranded in May 2013). It was founde ...

, which she opened in 1979.

Early life

Caroline Rose Hunt was born on January 8, 1923, the daughter of oilman

H. L. Hunt Haroldson Lafayette Hunt Jr. (February 17, 1889 – November 29, 1974) was an American oil tycoon. By trading poker winnings for oil rights according to legend, but more likely through money he gained from successful speculation in oil leases, he ...

(1889–1974) and Lyda Bunker (1889–1955).Linda Lee
A NIGHT OUT WITH: Caroline Rose Hunt; as indefatigable as ever
, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', January 28, 2001.David Whitford
Oil heiress strikes gold in hotels
,

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

, March 31, 2006Alan Peppard, Chris Vognar, Mr. Dallas, Terry Box. [https://archive.today/20131025035214/http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/headlines/20110708-dossier-dallas-caroline-rose-hunt-starting-with-an-old-home-built-a-hospitality-empire.ece?nclick_check=1 "Dossier Dallas: Caroline Rose Hunt, starting with an old home, built a hospitality empire]," ''The Dallas Morning News'', July 8, 2011.Hunt Family Tree
, ''D Magazine''.J. Michael Kennedy
Caroline Hunt's soured investment: Wealth: one of the nation's richest women has lost a bundle on stock in First Executive. Now her trust is bidding for the Los Angeles insurance company
, ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'', February 9, 1990. She had six siblings: Margaret Hunt Hill (1915–2007), H. L. Hunt III (1917–2005), Lyda Bunker Hunt (born and died in 1925),

Nelson Bunker Hunt Nelson Bunker Hunt (February 22, 1926 – October 21, 2014) was an American oil company executive. He was a billionaire whose fortune collapsed after he and his brothers William Herbert and Lamar tried to corner the world market in silver ...

(1926–2014),

William Herbert Hunt William Herbert Hunt (born March 6, 1929) is an American oil billionaire, who along with his brothers Nelson Bunker Hunt and Lamar Hunt tried but failed to corner the world market in silver. According to Forbes, as of January 2015 his net worth ...

(born 1929), and

Lamar Hunt Lamar Hunt (August 2, 1932 – December 13, 2006) was an American businessman most notable for his promotion of American football, soccer, and tennis in the United States. He was the principal founder of the American Football League (AFL) and ...

(1932–2006). While she was growing up, the family lived in the

east Texas East Texas is a broadly defined cultural, geographic, and ecological region in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Texas that comprises most of 41 counties. It is primarily divided into Northeast and Southeast Texas. Most of the region consi ...

town of

Tyler Tyler may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tyler (name), an English name; with lists of people with the surname or given name * Tyler, the Creator (born 1991), American rap artist and producer * John Tyler, 10th president of the United ...

.Karen Robinson-Jacobs. "The taste of success – turning the spotlight on Dallas' fine dining," ''The Dallas Morning News'', March 5, 2009, page 1D (Business section). Hunt said that as a child, she was unaware of the family's wealth until she found a ''Life'' magazine picture of her father, "with a caption that asked, 'Is this the richest man in the world?' " She was educated at the

Hockaday School The Hockaday School is an independent, secular, college preparatory day school for girls located in Dallas, Texas, United States. The boarding school was for girls in grades 8–12 and the day school is from pre-kindergarten to grade 12. The ...

, an all-girl boarding school in Dallas. She then attended

Mary Baldwin College Mary Baldwin University (MBU, formerly Mary Baldwin College) is a private university in Staunton, Virginia. It was founded in 1842 as Augusta Female Seminary. Today, Mary Baldwin University is home to the Mary Baldwin College for Women, a resid ...

, a private

women's college Women's colleges in higher education are undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institutions, often liberal arts colleges, whose student populations are composed exclusively or almost exclusively of women. Some women's colleges admit male stud ...

Staunton, Virginia Staunton ( ) is an independent city (United States), independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 25,750. In Virginia, independent cities a ...

, for two years, until she transferred to the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...

, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and art history.

Career

Prior to her first marriage, Hunt worked in her father's Dallas office. She later worked as a sales clerk at the

Neiman Marcus Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. is an American integrated luxury retailer headquartered in Dallas, Texas, which owns Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and Last Call. Since September 2021, NMG has been owned by a group of investment compani ...

department store in Dallas. During her first marriage and through much of her second, she focused on her family and charitable work, not holding any job outside the home until she entered the hotel business at age 55.Marty Primeau. "Caroline Hunt Schoellkopf: this Dallas billionaire is frugal, fastidious and flying high with her booming hotel business," ''The Dallas Morning News'', August 21, 1984, pp. 1F-2F. In 1980, she opened

The Mansion Restaurant The Mansion Restaurant is a restaurant in Turtle Creek, Dallas, Texas, United States. Located at 2821 Turtle Creek Boulevard, the restaurant, which occupies the former 1925 home of cotton magnate Sheppard King and later owned by oilman Toddie Le ...

on Turtle Creek. That same year, Hunt founded

, where she served as Honorary Chairman at the time of her death. The company owned the

Hotel Bel-Air The Hotel Bel-Air is a boutique hotel located in Bel-Air, Los Angeles, California. The hotel is one of the nine luxury hotels operated by the Dorchester Collection, which is owned by the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA). The hotel has a total of 103 ...

Bel Air, Los Angeles Bel Air (or Bel-Air) is a residential neighborhood on the Westside of Los Angeles, California, in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains. Founded in 1923, it is the home of the Hannah Carter Japanese Garden and the American Jewish Universit ...

in the 1980s, but sold it in 1989. It currently owns the

Carlyle Hotel The Carlyle Hotel, known formally as The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel, is a combination luxury apartment hotel located at 35 East 76th Street on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 76th Street, on the Upper East Side of New York City. O ...

on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

in New York City, among a portfolio of other luxury hotels. It is a subsidiary of a larger company owned by Hong Kong billionaire

Henry Cheng Henry Cheng Kar-shun, GBM, GBS ( Chinese: 鄭家純; born 11 December 1946) is a Hong Kong billionaire property developer. Cheng is the elder son of Cheng Yu-tung who founded Hong Kong-listed New World Development of which Henry succeeded hi ...

as the result of Hunt's 2011 sale of Rosewood and five of its hotel properties. She was inducted into the North Texas Commercial Association of Realtors Hall of Fame in May 2013.Candace Carlisle
"NTCAR names Caroline Rose Hunt, Mike Berry to Hall of Fame
," ''Dallas Business Journal'', February 4, 2013. Hunt had a line of bath and skin products called Lady Primrose, an outgrowth of the English country antiques shop she opened in 1987 with a friend.Diane Jennings. "Caroline Hunt," ''The Dallas Morning News'', ''High Profile'' section, page 13E. In 2000, she wrote a novel, ''Primrose Past: The 1848 Journal of Young Lady Primrose''. She also wrote two cookbooks.

Philanthropy

In 1991, together with her sister Margaret, Hunt paid for the restoration of Hilltop, an 1810 building on the campus of Mary Baldwin College which is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

.Mary Baldwin College: Annual Giving Societies
In 2013, she received the

J. Erik Jonsson John Erik Jonsson (6 September 1901 – 31 August 1995) was a co-founder and early president of Texas Instruments Incorporated. He became Mayor of Dallas, a major advocate of the creation of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, and a philan ...

Award from the

United Way United Way is an international network of over 1,800 local nonprofit fundraising affiliates. United Way was the largest nonprofit organization in the United States by donations from the public, prior to 2016. United Way organizations raise funds ...

of Metropolitan Dallas in thanks for a history of donations to United Way organizations. Hunt was also a donor to the

National Museum of Women in the Arts The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openin ...

, the Tiffany Circle of the

American Red Cross The American Red Cross (ARC), also known as the American National Red Cross, is a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. It is the desi ...

, the conservative

Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the presiden ...

, and the James Madison Council of the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

. She served on the board of trustees of the

John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (formally known as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center) is the United States National Cultural Center, located on the Potom ...

in Washington, D.C., for ten years. She also served as honorary chair of the Retina Foundation of the Southwest, a non-profit organization for research into

macular degeneration Macular degeneration, also known as age-related macular degeneration (AMD or ARMD), is a medical condition which may result in blurred or no vision in the center of the visual field. Early on there are often no symptoms. Over time, however, som ...

— a condition from which Hunt herself suffered — and restoration of vision loss. Hunt donated to many other Dallas cultural and educational organizations.

Personal life

Hunt was married twice. Her first husband was Loyd Bowmer Sands, a pilot in the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

. They had five children. After they divorced in 1973, she married a second time, to Buddy Schoellkopf. They later divorced. Hunt died on November 13, 2018 at the T. Boone Pickens Hospice and Palliative Care Center in Dallas, at the age of 95 from a stroke.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunt, Caroline Rose 1923 births 2018 deaths Hunt family Writers from Dallas People from El Dorado, Arkansas Businesspeople from Texas Mary Baldwin University alumni University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts alumni American hoteliers Philanthropists from Texas American Presbyterians Writers from Arkansas Hockaday School alumni