Julia Morley

Julia Evelyn Morley (born 1939) is a British businesswoman, charity worker and former model. She is the Chairwoman of the Miss World Organisation which runs the annual Miss World competition. She is the widow of Miss World founder Eric Morley, who organised from the first pageant in 1951 until his death in 2000.

Born Julia Pritchard in London, she worked as a model, and met Eric Morley, then a director of Mecca Dancing, at a dance hall in Leeds; the couple married in 1960. She became Chairwoman of Miss World after her husband died in 2000.

As Chairwoman of Miss World, she introduced ‘Beauty With A Purpose’ which raises money in support of sick and disadvantaged children. In 2009, Morley used the opening of the Miss World Festival to launch the Variety International Children’s Fund with a Charity Dinner which raised over $400,000 for nutritional, educational and medical projects in Haiti. When Simon Cowell was given the 2010 Humanitarian Award at the Variety World Conference in Hollywood, he commented that Julia Morley should be collecting the award in his place for her work as a humanitarian. A few months later Julia Morley herself was given the Humanitarian Award by Variety of Ireland.

In 2013, while visiting Haiti with Miss World 2013 Megan Young, Morley experienced a serious accident while visiting an orphanage. Young only received minor injuries from the fall while Morley suffered a hip fracture.