Serena Rothschild

Serena Mary Rothschild, Baroness Rothschild was a British Thoroughbred racehorse owner and the wife of Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild.

Early life

Rothschild was born in 1934, the eldest child of Sir Philip Gordon Dunn, Bt., and Lady Mary Sybil St. Clair-Erskine. Her sister is the writer Nell Dunn. Her paternal grandfather was Sir James Dunn, Bt., a prominent Canadian industrialist. Her parents divorced in 1944 and remarried each other in 1969.

Thoroughbred racing

Rothschild oversaw the management of Waddesdon Stud at Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire. In November 2006, she paid 3 million guineas for the mare Spinning Queen, then a world record price of 4.6 million guineas when she purchased Magical Romance at the Tattersalls sale.
In 2009, her colt Pounced, trained by John Gosden and ridden by Frankie Dettori, won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California. In 2011, her colt Nathaniel won the King Edward VII Stakes at Ascot and the King George VI and [Queen Elizabeth Stakes], also at Ascot. In 2012, she won the Eclipse Stakes with Nathaniel, The Lancashire Oaks, and then the Irish Oaks with Great Heavens.

Personal life

On 20 October 1961 in Devizes, Wiltshire, she married Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, an investment banker who was a birth member of the Rothschild [banking family of England] as the eldest son to Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild and his first wife, Barbara Judith. Together, they had four children, consisting of three daughters and a son. Their children were;

The Hon. Hannah Mary Rothschild, a film maker. She married William Lord Brookfield, an American filmmaker, in 1994, they had three daughters together, and were divorced in 2000.
The Hon. Beth Matilda Rothschild. She married Antonio Tomassini in 1991, they had three children together, and later divorced.
The Hon. Emily Magda Rothschild. She married Julian Freeman-Attwood on 25 June 1998 and they had two daughters together. They split in 2016.
The Right Honourable Nathaniel Philip Victor James Rothschild, 5th Baron Rothschild, a financier. He eloped to Las Vegas with Annabelle Neilson, a socialite, on 13 November 1995 and they were divorced in 1998. He married Loretta Victoria Basey, a former Page 3 model for The Sun, in Klosters on 23 July 2016.

The couple made their home at Pewsey, Wiltshire, and maintained a villa on the Greek island of Corfu. She and her husband were involved in a number of charitable and humanitarian organisations, and she was a Vice President of the Wiltshire Blind Association.
Lady Rothschild died in a London hospital on 13 January 2019, having "fought a recent illness most valiantly,". She was 84.