Born: 1912, France
Died: 2000
Country most active: International
Also known as: Germaine Thérèse Pellegrino
Germaine Ford de Maria was a French philanthropist who funded Egyptologist Christiane Desroches Noblecourt’s excavation of the Valley of the Queens in the 1980s, among other cultural and environmental causes. She also paid to restore a 12th-century chapel in Cannes, donated money to buy paintings for a local museum, and helped fund a television series about plant biology and ecology with ecologist and urban planner Jean-Marie Pelt. She also wanted to promote peace in the Middle East, helping to fund the Israeli Film Institute and wanting to honor the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, whose 1981 assassination was the result of his efforts to create peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
When Desroches Noblecourt provided her with two possible project budgets – one significantly more expensive than the other – de Maria’s sons encouraged her to “do it right.” And so she agreed to provide more than $1 million, funding tractors and other equipment, salaries for more than a dozens researchers plus local workers, housing and more. de Maria frequently visited the site during the excavation work.
De Maria grew up the daughter of an Italian stonemason. At age 17, she had a liaison with Jagatjit Singh, the 58-year-old maharaja of Kapurthala, who invited the beautiful young woman to his palace. A Francophile, he was known for romancing – and in some cases, marrying – young European women. Then Germaine Pellegrino, she was modeling for The House of Worth in Cannes, where they met in 1928. After several dates, he invited her to visit his palace in India, which was inspired by Versailles. She agreed, on the condition that he not treat her as a “little toy.”
Greeting her upon her arrival were troops lining the road leading to the palace’s main gate, a band playing La Marseillaise, and Singh’s children, prime minister and other top officials. During her stay, she attended all official functions, dining with politicians and officials, learning the politics and intrigues of the kingdom. When she returned to Paris in 1932, Singh reportedly followed her there, asking her to marry him and promising to make her his chief maharani. She declined, but her time with him had left her enriched, with jewelry including priceless pearl necklaces and diamond and emerald bracelets and earrings.
She soon married Reginald Ford, a wealthy British movie mogul in his early 40s. Ford had founded a company in early 1920s New York importing French films to the United States, and one in Paris to distribute U.S. films in Europe. He went on to open a chain of theatres in France and other Western European countries. After only a few years of marriage, Ford died suddenly in 1937, aged 47. Germaine Ford, only 25 years old, inherited and began to managed his businesses, including opening more theaters in Europe.
Two years later she met a French modernist artist, Pierre de Maria, who would later become known for his fanciful paintings of machinery. The pair married in the 1940s and had two sons, the younger of whom was barely a year old when the philandering de Maria abandoned the family. Germaine took her sons to live in the south of France, where she became a patron of worthy causes.
(This entry is based on information from the 2023 book Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt’s Ancient Temples from Destruction by Lynne Olson.)