Nena von Schlebrügge

Baroness Birgitte Caroline "Nena" von Schlebrügge (born January 8, 1941) is a Mexican-born former fashion model of Swedish and German ancestry from the 1950s and 1960s. She is now the Managing Director of Menla Mountain Retreat.

Von Schlebrügge's maternal grandmother's parents were German and Danish. Her mother had served as sv:Axel Ebbe's model for Famntaget ("The Embrace"), a 1930s statue of a nude woman that overlooks the harbor of Smygehuk in Sweden. On her father's side, she has an older half-sister, who was the paternal grandmother of German-Swedish football player Max von Schlebrügge.

Modeling

In 1955, at the age of 14, Nena was discovered by Vogue photographer Norman Parkinson when he was on a tour in Stockholm, Sweden. In 1957, Nena moved to London, England, to pursue a career in high-fashion modeling. She found immediate success and was invited to come to New York City by Eileen Ford of the Ford Modeling Agency to continue her modelling career.

In the snow storm of March 1958, at the age of 17, she arrived in New York City on the Queen Mary. In New York City, she continued her career as a top model, working at Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. She was photographed by many fashion photographers, including Gleb Derujinsky.

Acting

In 1967, she had a part in the Edie Sedgwick film Ciao! Manhattan. The film took four years to make; and drastic changes from the original story were made, causing the filmmakers to have to remove many scenes. including Nena's, shot in 1967. These deleted scenes can be found on the DVD version.

Other activities

From 1987 to 1989, Nena was the Program Director at the New York Open Center and, from 1991 to 2002, was the Managing Director of Tibet House US located in New York City. Tibet House US was founded in 1986 by the Thurmans, Philip Glass, and Richard Gere, at the behest of the Dalai Lama. Nena oversaw the construction of Tibet House US, the educational programming, and, with Philip Glass, initiated the annual benefit concert at Carnegie Hall, as well as the annual benefit auction at Christie's.She executive produced The First 30 Years of Tibet House U.S. film, directed by John Halpern.

Since 2001, Nena has been the Managing Director of the Tibet House US-owned Menla Mountain Retreat, where she has overseen the construction of a state-of-the-art Tibetan medicinal spa facility and business in the Catskill Mountains in Phoenicia, New York. She is also a psychotherapist.

Nena married Timothy Leary in 1964 at the Hitchcock Estate (commonly known as "Millbrook"). D. A. Pennebaker documented the event in his short film You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You. Charles Mingus played piano at the wedding ceremony. The marriage lasted a year before von Schlebrügge divorced Leary in 1965. In 1967, she married Indo-Tibetan Buddhist scholar and ex-monk Robert Thurman, whom she had met at Millbrook. In the same year, Nena and Robert's first child, Ganden Thurman, was born. In 1970, Robert and Nena's second child, Uma Thurman, was born. They have two more sons: Dechen (b. 1973) and Mipam (b. 1978). The children grew up in Woodstock, NY, where the Thurmans had bought nine acres of land with a small inheritance Nena had received. The Thurmans built their own house there. In addition to their four children, the pair have seven grandchildren, including Maya Hawke.