Jennifer Mary Victoria d'Abo (nee Hammond-Maude, 14 August 1945 – 30 April 2003) was a British entrepreneur, best known for turning around the retail chain

Ryman Ryman is a stationery retail company with 205 outlets nationwide in the United Kingdom. The website and stores provide a wide range of stationery and office supplies for homes and businesses, with its headquarters in Crewe, Cheshire. Hist ...

in the 1980s, and making stationery "trendy". According to Nicholas Faith writing in ''The Independent'', she was "that rarest of phenomena, a serial female entrepreneur".

Early life

She was born Jennifer Mary Victoria Hammond-Maude on 14 August 1945, the daughter of a diplomat, Major Michael William Vernon Hammond-Maude, and his first wife, Rosamond Patrick. He was the last undisputed Lord of the Manor of Baildon. She had a half-sister, Clarissa Hammond-Maude, from her father's second marriage to Sonia Mary Peake, daughter of

Osbert Peake, 1st Viscount Ingleby Osbert Peake, 1st Viscount Ingleby, PC (30 December 1897 – 11 October 1966) was a British Conservative Party politician. He served as Minister of National Insurance and then as Minister of Pensions and National Insurance from 1951 to 1955. ...

and Lady Joan Rachel de Vere Capell.

Career

After she married her third husband, she started a business career, with a

grocery shop A grocery store ( AE), grocery shop ( BE) or simply grocery is a store that primarily retails a general range of food products, which may be fresh or packaged. In everyday U.S. usage, however, "grocery store" is a synonym for supermarket, an ...

Basingstoke Basingstoke ( ) is the largest town in the county of Hampshire. It is situated in south-central England and lies across a valley at the source of the River Loddon, at the far western edge of The North Downs. It is located north-east of Southa ...

, soon followed by a furniture shop, which sold three years later for a profit of £1 million, and bought a toiletries company. In 1981, she bought the

stationery shop chain from

Ralph Halpern Sir Ralph Mark Halpern (24 October 1938 – 10 August 2022) was a British businessman, who was the founder of Topshop and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Burton Group from 1979 to 1991. Early life Ralph Halpern was born in October 1938 i ...

Burton Group Arcadia Group Ltd (formerly Arcadia Group plc and, until 1998, Burton Group plc) was a British multinational retailing company headquartered in London, England. It was best known for being the previous parent company of British Home Stores (BH ...

, before selling it in 1987 to

Pentos Pentos plc was a holding company that operated between 1972 and 1995 and was best known for its ownership of the Dillons, Ryman and Athena retail brands. Pentos was established from a shell company by Terry Maher in January 1972 as a vehicle for ...

for £20 million, growing the business value by nearly ten times in six years. The success of her later ventures was more mixed, and she even had a

recipe book A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes. Cookbooks may be general, or may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food. Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (appetizer, first cou ...

published, complete with several celebrities contributing, ''Jennifer d'Abo At Home''.

Personal life

In 1963, she married David Morgan-Jones, a Life Guards officer, they had a daughter, Sophie, and later divorced. In 1970, she married Peter Cadbury, who was 27 years older than her, and they had a son, Joel Cadbury, but divorced in 1976. Peter Cadbury said that the split was because, "she's a better entrepreneur than me". Her third marriage, to the stockbroker Robin d'Abo, survived until 1987. She stayed on good terms with all three of her former husbands, and once arranged a dinner with all three, which was a success; and she went on holiday with one ex- and her successor. She was known for her eccentricities, her connections to socialites and her "larger-than-life style", "typified by trademark heart-shaped spectacles". She died of cancer on April 30, 2003, aged 57.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abo, Jennifer d' 1945 births 2003 deaths British women in business British grocers Businesspeople from London

Jennifer Jennifer or Jenifer may refer to: People *Jennifer (given name) * Jenifer (singer), French pop singer * Jennifer Warnes, American singer who formerly used the stage name Jennifer * Daniel of St. Thomas Jenifer * Daniel Jenifer Film and tele ...

20th-century British businesswomen 21st-century British businesswomen 20th-century English businesspeople