Jane Engelhard

Jane Engelhard (August 12, 1917 – February 29, 2004), born Marie Antoinette Jeanne Reiss, was an American philanthropist, best known for her marriage to billionaire industrialist Charles W. Engelhard, Jr., as well as her donation of an elaborate 18th-century Neapolitan crêche to the White House in 1967. She was named to the International Best Dressed List Hall of Fame in 1972.

Born in Qingdao, China, she was a daughter of Hugo Reiss (1879-?), a prominent Shanghai-based, German-born Jewish businessman who was an executive at his family's British fabric-and-small-arms wholesale firm, G. Reiss & Co. Ltd. and served as Brazil's consul in Shanghai. Her mother, Ignatia Mary Valerie Murphy (1891/93-1965), was an Irish Roman Catholic native of San Francisco, California.

She had two sisters by her parents' marriage: Barry Jeanette Reiss-Brian (1914-1970), and Huguette Madeleine Reiss-Brian (1916-1994, married Major Rupert Charles Frederick Gerard, then Lawrence Hoguet; mother of 5th Baron Gerard of Bryn).

Her mother later married French citizen Guy Louis Albert Brian (1891-) and had two daughters: Marie-Brigitte Brian (1928-, Countess Bernard de La Rochefoucauld) and Patricia "Bébé" Brian (1930-, Madame Jacques Bemberg). Her maiden surname has been variously been published as Reis, Reiss, Pinto Reis, Pinto-Reis Brian or Reiss-Brian.

All five daughters were raised as Catholics, with the three Reiss girls spending their infancy and early childhood in Shanghai, China. After Mary Reiss divorced Hugo Reiss and married Guy Brian, the family lived in Paris, and Jane graduated from the Convent des Oiseaux, a fashionable Catholic school in Neuilly, France; its alumni included the future Vietnamese empress Nam Phương.

On 1 June 1939, in Vaucresson, France, she married Fritz Mannheimer (1890–1939), a German Jewish banker and art collector. The director of Mendelssohn & Co. in Amsterdam, a branch of a Berlin bank on Jagerstrasse 51, known for floating multimillion-dollar loans to various European governments, including that of Germany and Russia, he died eight weeks after the wedding, reportedly of a heart attack, on 9 August 1939. The actual cause of Mannheimer's death remains as speculative as its timing was suspicious. One day after his death, the Amsterdam branch announced that it was insolvent and that it was confiscating Mannheimer's art collection, which had been financed with unlimited bank credit. Shortly thereafter, the entire firm was liquidated by the German government.

The couple had one child, Anne France Mannheimer (now known as Annette de la Renta) (1939-), who was born after Mannheimer's death.

Jane Mannheimer moved first to London, then to Buenos Aires, then to New York City after her first husband's death. In 1947 she was named vice president of the merchandising division of Holbrook Microfilming Service, a company which was headed by president John J. Raskob and chairman Lt. Gen. Hugh Drum. She also was a member of Sillman & Associates, through which she was a minor investor in Broadway revues such as "New Shoes" and "Gentlemen Be Seated."

On 18 August 1947, in New York City, New York, Jane Mannheimer married Charles W. Engelhard, Jr. (1917–1971), vice-president of Baker & Co. Inc. and heir to Engelhard Industries, a New Jersey-based minerals conglomerate. The couple lived in Far Hills, New Jersey, where they raised golden retrievers and thoroughbred race horses, including the fabled Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing champion, Nijinsky. They had numerous homes, including Cragwood, a 1920s neo-Georgian mansion in New Jersey, a country house in South Africa, and residences in London, Paris, Maine, Nantucket, New York City, and Quebec's Gaspé Peninsula.

The Engelhards had five daughters:

• Susan Engelhard O'Connor
• Sophie Jane Elizabeth Engelhard Craighead
• Sally Alexandra Engelhard Pingree
• Charlene B. Engelhard Troy.

Charles Engelhard also adopted his wife's daughter from her first marriage.

Jane Engelhard was a patron of numerous causes and institutions, including the New Jersey Symphony. She served on the Boards the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Morgan Library for many years. She also was a member of the Fine Arts Committee of the White House, organized during the Kennedy administration; the decoration of the Small State Dining Room is among her reported contributions to the restoration of the White House.

In 1977, Engelhard was the first woman appointed as a Commissioner of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. She was also a member of the Library of Congress Trust Fund Board and a recipient of the Legion d'honneur.

Engelhard died of pneumonia on February 29, 2004, at her home in Nantucket, Massachusetts.