Meet the Duke of Westminster and His Soon-to-be Duchess
When the Duke of Westminster visited charities in Chester today to see the projects that his foundation is funding, he found himself sitting next to an old classmate. Emma Thomas, who attended a local primary school with the Duke, is now a development artist with Cheshire Dance and began reminiscing with her guest about children’s birthday parties. “He looks exactly the same as I remember him,” she said afterwards. “We were just talking about the birthday parties we went to together as children, it was lovely to catch up a bit.”
The exchange was typical in tone as Hugh Grosvenor, the billionaire seventh Duke of Westminster, and his soon-to-be Duchess, Olivia Henson, visited three organizations funded by the Westminster Foundation. The Foundation supports multiple charities and organizations in Chester, and the visit came exactly one month ahead of the couple’s wedding at Chester Cathedral on June 7. Other than one remarkably casual shot of Hugh and Olivia released when their engagement was announced in April 2023, it was also the first time that the couple has been properly pictured together publicly.
After being introduced through friends around two years earlier, Hugh, 33, and Olivia, 31, became engaged at Eaton Hall outside of Chester which has been home to the Grosvenor family since the 1400s and is where Hugh grew up. He has multiple ties to the royal family, serving as godfather to both Prince George and Prince Archie, and he also took on a role at the King’s coronation in the procession. Attendance at his wedding is yet to be confirmed, but it is expected that Prince William will be there. With the King and Princess of Wales currently being treated for cancer, it is unclear which other royals will attend.
“I think next time we’re in here will be slightly more nerve-wracking,” Hugh told T&C today after watching a toddler music group from charity The Cathedral Music Trust. “But I’m unbelievably excited. I also just wanted to make it very clear how unbelievably helpful people have been, how supportive they’ve been so far which I’m unbelievably grateful for. Because I do realize that it’s going to be a big thing for the city. It’s going to be certainly a huge thing for us, so we’re just really grateful for all the help.”
The decision to have the wedding in Chester was, the couple said, an easy one, with both of them quick to highlight what the city offers (he mentions the incredible racecourse and Storyhouse cultural building and she cites the amazing restaurants as her wheelhouse).
“It’s obviously a place where we will live, where we’ll be building our lives together,” Olivia said. "And we’re slowly transitioning to move up from London and be much more permanent here and really putting roots down. So actually, yes it was a really easy decision in the end.”
Hugh’s late father, the sixth Duke of Westminster, once gave a candid interview in which he admitted being a reluctant heir to the Dukedom after his uncle died childless. He and his wife Natalia, who is godmother to Prince William, appear to have notably successfully nurtured four down-to-earth, socially conscious children despite their vast wealth. One of Hugh’s three sisters, Edwina, has forged a career in prison reform and all are heavily involved with charitable endeavors.
Indeed, since becoming Duke of Westminster on his father’s death in 2016, Hugh has quietly gone about transforming the Westminster Foundation. Without fanfare, he has distributed multiple grants of hundreds of thousands of pounds to help programs that nurture under-25s across areas where his family has associations: Chester, Westminster, Lancashire, and parts of the Highlands.
“Before, our grant-giving was very much haphazard. My father saw a good idea and would like to back it,” Hugh said. “I looked at the Westminster Foundation and thought how can we make it relevant, how can I make it mine and what do I want to focus on. We went through a long process of asking various different charities what they thought was the need.”
“We were doing these roundtable events and everyone said that early years and supporting young people and young families is something that’s not often focused on enough because it doesn’t look good on the back of a glossy annual review. And I said hold on a minute, what do you mean by that?” he continued. “And they said well often if you get it right they don’t become statistics. And I thought well that is exactly what we should be focusing on then…I said look, if we’re going to support these charities I’d really like to build a relationship with them and back them for the long-term so we can get to know them and really start to understand what the impact that we’re having is.”
The Westminster Foundation awards partnership grants of up to £100,000 per year to fund long-term projects, such as the Young Leaders program which Hugh and Olivia saw today being run by the Storyhouse cultural center, now in its fourth year of funding. Kera-leigh, 19, completed the program two years ago and credits it with transforming her experience of education. “I’m a lot more confident and more open-minded,” she said. “It’s helped me make friends and speak to people I wouldn’t normally speak to.”
Annabel Turpin, Chief Executive of Storyhouse, emphasized the importance of long-term support that Hugh’s interest in young people in Chester is providing. “If you’re really going to do something transformational you can’t just fly in and out,” she said. “Unfortunately there are a lot of people who are really disenfranchised and whose basic needs in education, in life in general, are not being met. To have someone who is backing a foundation that really shows care for these communities is massive and is just enabling us to work with people who we wouldn’t otherwise be able to support.”
In a morning of events that had hallmarks of a royal visit on a much more low-key scale, Hugh and Olivia first watched young children who are home educated take part in a Capoeira class run by Cheshire Dance. Then they met people from the Storyhouse Young Leaders before heading to the Cathedral. The Westminster Foundation has recently donated to the Cathedral’s Project Discovery initiative to enable them to expand their cultural offering.
Adam Holloway, Director of Cheshire Dance, described the money given to them as “transformative.” “We have to pay the artists, we have to hire spaces,” he said. “So to come across an organization that just enables us to do what we do, which is reach out into the community and meet the demand where it is. That’s transformative for us, and over a five-year period is unheard of. So it gives us a real opportunity to plan properly and look forward into the future and plan a whole series of activities and groups.”
You Might Also Like
