She is Beautiful, she is stylish, she is phillantropist and a great mother and spouse. Her appearances are always multy discussed in the best way. She inpires women in Denmark and Australia with her classy personal style and her elegant attitude. Today she is celebrating her 44 Birthday ! In honor of this wonderful woman, I would like you to let me remember some interesting things about Her Majestry.
Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, Countess of Monpezat, R.E. (née Mary Elizabeth Donaldson; born 5 February 1972 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia) is the wife of Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark. Frederik is the heir apparent to the throne of Denmark, which means that at the time Frederik inherits the throne, Mary will automatically become Queen consort of Denmark.
The couple met at the Slip Inn, a pub in Sydney, when the prince was visiting Australia during the 2000 Summer Olympics. Their official engagement in 2003 and their marriage the following year were the subject of extensive attention from Australian and European news media, which portrayed the marriage as a modern “fairytale” romance between a prince and a commoner.
Mary Elizabeth Donaldson was born the youngest of four children of mathematics professor Dr. John Dalgleish Donaldson and his first wife, Henrietta (née Horne), both Scottish. She was named after her grandmothers, Mary Dalgleish and Elizabeth Gibson Melrose. Henrietta Donaldson was executive assistant to the vice-chancellor of the University of Tasmania. In 2001, four years after her death, John Donaldson married the British author and novelist Susan Horwood.
Donaldson was born and raised in Hobart. During her childhood, she was involved in sports and other extracurricular activities both at school and elsewhere. She studied piano, flute and clarinet, and played basketball and hockey.
In 1974, Donaldson started schooling in Clear Lake City Elementary School in Houston, Texas (where her father was working) and moved to Sandy Bay from 1975 to 1977. Her primary education, from 1978 to 1987, was at Waimea Heights with her secondary schooling being at Taroona High School (1988-1992), and at Hobart Matriculation College.
Donaldson studied at the University of Tasmania from 1989 to 1994, completing a combined degree in commerce and law and graduating on 27 May 1995. Between 1994 and 1996, she attended a graduate program and qualified with certificates in advertising from the Advertising Federation of Australia (AFA) and direct marketing from the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA).
While studying in Tasmania, Donaldson reportedly had a joint business interest in a company called Kingcash, with Brent Annells, with whom she had a seven-year relationship in the 1990s.
She worked for Australian and global advertising agencies after graduating in 1995. Upon graduation Mary moved to Melbourne to work in advertising. She became a trainee in marketing and communications with the Melbourne office of DDB Needham, taking a position of account executive.
In 1996, Mary was employed by Mojo Partners as an account manager. In 1998, six months after her mother’s death, she resigned and travelled to America and Europe. In Edinburgh, she worked for three months as an account manager with Rapp Collins Worldwide; then, in early 1999, she was appointed as an account director with the international advertising agency Young & Rubicam in Sydney.
In June 2000, she moved to a smaller Australian agency, Love Branding, working for a short time as the company’s first account director. However, in the (Australian) spring of 2000 until December 2001, she became sales director and a member of the management team of Belle Property, a real estate firm specialising in luxury property.
In the first half of 2002 Mary taught English at a business school in Paris but, on moving to Denmark permanently, she was employed by Microsoft Business Solutions (5 September 2002 – 24 September 2003) near Copenhagen as a project consultant for business development, communications and marketing.
Mary Donaldson met Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark at the Slip Inn during the 2000 Summer Olympics on 16 September in Sydney. He was not identified by her friends as the Crown Prince of Denmark until after they met. They conducted a long-distance relationship by phone, email and letter and Frederik made a number of discreet visits to Australia.
On 15 November 2001 the Danish weekly magazine Billed Bladet named Mary as Frederik’s girlfriend. She then moved from Australia to Denmark in December 2001, while she was working as an English tutor in Paris. On 24 September 2003 the Danish court announced that Queen Margrethe II intended to give her consent to the marriage at the State Council meeting scheduled for 8 October 2003.
Frederik presented Mary with an engagement ring featuring an emerald-cut diamond and two emerald-cut ruby baguettes, which are similar to the colour of Denmark’s flag. The couple became officially engaged on 8 October 2003.
Mary Donaldson and Crown Prince Frederik married on 14 May 2004 in Copenhagen Cathedral, in Copenhagen. Mary wore a wedding gown designed by Danish designer Uffe Frank and had a small bridal party.
The wedding was celebrated in Copenhagen and at Fredensborg Palace. The couple reportedly spent their honeymoon in Africa.
The Danish Folketing (parliament) passed a special law (Mary’s Law) giving Mary Donaldson Danish citizenship upon her marriage, a standard procedure for new foreign members of the royal family; she was previously a dual citizen of Australia and the United Kingdom.
Formerly a Presbyterian, Mary converted to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Denmark upon marriage. Shortly before entering the royal family, Mary signed a marriage agreement similar to those of her father-in-law and her former sister-in-law. The agreement was subsequently updated in late 2006. The details of these have never been made public, but it can be assumed that they concern financial matters, royal status and custodial rights to the children in the event of a divorce.
The Crown Princess and her family currently reside at Frederik VIII’s Palace, one of the four palaces that make up the Amalienborg Palace complex. From May 2004 they have also resided at The Chancellery House, a building in the park at Fredensborg Palace.
Mary is an active patron of Denmark’s third-highest-earning export industry, the fashion industry and is Patron of the Copenhagen Fashion Summit.
She has been named one of the world’s most fashionable people in Vanity Fair’s annual International Best-Dressed List and has posed and given interviews for magazines including Vogue Australia (where she used pieces of foreign designers, such as Hugo Boss, Prada, Louis Vuitton or Gaultier, and Danish designers, as Malene Birger and Georg Jensen), Dansk (Danish Magazine, dedicated to Danish fashion), German Vogue (where she was photographed between pieces of Danish modern art in Amalienborg Palace).
Mary also posed for other magazines during her life as a royal, such as Women’s Weekly Australia magazine (to which she spoke in several occasions about her life as a royal and her family) and Parade Magazine.
Her elegance was praised by designer Tommy Hilfiger.
Since 2004 Crown Princess Mary has steadily worked to establish her relationships with various organisations, their issues, missions, programmes and staff. Mary’s patronages range across areas of culture, the fashion industry, humanitarian aid, support for research and science, social and health patronages and sport (golf and swimming).
The organisations for which she is patron have reported positive outcomes through their relationship with Mary and there are various reports in the Danish media and on some of the websites of the organisations themselves about Mary being quite involved in her working relationship with them.
Mary is currently involved in supporting anti-obesity programs through the World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe.
Mary’s current patronages include cultural organisations, the Danish fashion industry humanitarian aid, research and science, social, health and humanitarian organisations and sporting organisations.
Crown Princess Mary is also an Honorary Life Governor of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute based at the Garvan Institute/St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, a member of the International Committee of Women Leaders for Mental Health and a member of various sporting clubs (riding, golf and yachting).
In June 2010, it was announced that Crown Princess Mary has become Patron of UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, “to support the agency’s work to promote maternal health and safer motherhood in more than 150 developing nations”.
Mary lends her support to a number of other ‘one-off’ Danish causes, industry events and international conferences. In 2011, the Westmead Cancer Centre at Westmead Hospital in Sydney was renamed the Crown Princess Mary Cancer Care Centre Westmead.
On 11 September 2007 Crown Princess Mary announced the establishment of the Mary Foundation at the inaugural meeting at Amalienborg Palace. The initial funds of DKK 1.1 million were collected in Denmark and Greenland and donated to Frederik and Mary as a wedding gift in 2004. Crown Princess Mary is the chairwoman of eight trustees. The Mary Foundation aims to improve lives compromised by environment, heredity, illness or other circumstances which can isolate or exclude people socially. In 2014, Mary received a Bambi Award.
Her official title in Danish is Hendes Kongelige Højhed Kronprinsesse Mary af Danmark, Grevinde af Monpezat.
Mary has been Crown Princess of Denmark since her marriage and also Countess of Monpezat by marriage since 29 April 2008, when Queen Margrethe II granted the title to her male-line descendants. She also holds the rank of lieutenant in the Home Guard.
She is really inspiring and lovely…!
We wish Her all the Best !
Georgia Papadon & team
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