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Eleanor Elkins Widener
Born	May 21, 1862
Died	July 13, 1937 Paris
Cause of death	Heart attack
Resting place	Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadephia
Known for	Gift of Widener Library
Spouses	George Dunton Widener Alexander Hamilton Rice
Children	Harry Elkins Widener (1885–1912) George Dunton Widener, Jr. (1889–1971) Eleanor Widener Dixon (1891–1953)
Parents	William Lukens Elkins Maria Louise (Broomall) Widener

Eleanor Elkins Widener, née Eleanor Elkins (later known as Eleanor Elkins Widener Rice; May 21, 1862–July 13, 1937) was an American heiress, socialite, philanthropist, and adventuress best remembered for her donation to Harvard University of the Widener Library‍—‌a memorial to her elder son Harry Elkins Widener, who (along with her first husband, George Dunton Widener) perished in the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

Widener later married Harvard professor Alexander Hamilton Rice, a surgeon and explorer. She subsequently accompanied him on a number of expeditions, including one on which she "went further up the Amazon than any white woman had penetrated" and he was attacked by cannibals.

Marriage

Widener was the daughter of Philadelphia streetcar magnate William Lukens Elkins. In 1883 she married George Dunton Widener, son of her father's business partner, thereby "[uniting] two of the largest fortunes in the city. She was known as one of the city's most beautiful women."

They lived in her father-in-law's 110-room mansion in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. Their children were Harry Elkins Widener, George Dunton Widener, Jr., and Eleanor (Widener) Dixon.

Titanic survival and Widener Library

In 1912 Widener and her husband traveled with their elder son Harry to Paris, searching for a chef for their new hotel, Philadelphia's Ritz Carlton. On April 12 they embarked at Cherbourg on the RMS Titanic for their return to New York; after that ship struck an iceberg, "[George] Widener placed his wife and her maid in a lifeboat. The women were rescued by the steamship RMS Carpathia, but George D. Widener and his son Harry both went down with the ship." (According to her New York Times obituary Widener "survived the Titanic by manning the oars in a lifeboat.")

Within a few months Widener donated $2 million to Harvard University (from which Harry Widener had graduated in 1907) for construction of the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. She also rebuilt St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church in Philadelphia's Ogontz neighborhood as a memorial to her first husband, and gave $300,000 to the Hill School (in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and from which Harry Widener had graduated in 1903) for a general science building in memory of her son.

Second marriage and South American adventures

At the library's dedication Widener met Harvard professor Alexander Hamilton Rice, a noted South American explorer. In October 1915 she married Rice while wearing her "celebrated [$750,000] string of pearls which she saved from the Titanic disaster". She gave up her Philadelphia home, spending her time in Newport, New York and Paris when not accompanying Rice in his explorations.

On a 1920 trip, "she went further up the Amazon than any white woman had penetrated. The party warded off an attack by savages and killed two cannibals in the skirmish. As a result that trip was abandoned on the advice of Indian guides, but the Rices ventured several more times into the jungles." ("Explorer Rice Denies That He Was Eaten By Cannibals", one headline read.)

In 1937 she died of a heart attack at a Paris store.