Albina du Boisrouvray had everything and nothing growing up.
‘In the question of affluence, it was a tropical environment, but in the question of affection, it was the North Pole. It was very cold. I never sat on my mother’s knees,’ the 86-year-old tells Metro from her home in Paris.
Born into extreme wealth as the granddaughter of Bolivian tin magnate Simón Patiño and the daughter of Count Guy du Boisrouvray, Albina’s childhood was one of glitz and glamour, with round-the-clock staff, luxurious foreign holidays, and homes around the world.
An only child, she lived in Egypt, Morocco, France, Switzerland, England and the USA, as part of what she calls ‘a family of opulent nomads.’
Christmases were spent at the Palace Hotel in Saint-Moritz in the Swiss Alps, where Albina observed the lives of women with long red fingernails who didn’t work, whose sole goal seemed to be to ‘look pretty and wear the latest fashions’.
She felt like a bird trapped in a gilded cage and nothing seemed to make sense.
‘I never thought I fitted at all in the world where I landed. My family didn’t really pay much attention to me or take much care of me. From the age of seven onwards, I was put in various different places with various different people,’ Albina remembers.
As a toddler, she was allowed daily visits with her mother – ‘15 minutes of mutual boredom,’ she recalls. Once, after moving into a new home in a wealthy Parisian suburb, Albina fell down a lift shaft. Shocked and injured, she remembers being laid on a sofa while her mother stood in the doorway and said, ‘Put a cloth under her head – the blood will stain the chintz upholstery.’
Raised by nannies and governesses, Albina also spent a spell in a cold English boarding school, which she hated.
However, the octogenarian doesn’t feel sorry for herself when looking back at her emotionally deprived childhood. Instead, she used her distance from her family to cultivate a creative mind and a free spirit.
She remembers feeling deeply affected by the stark inequalities she often witnessed while travelling the world during her cosmopolitan childhood. At New York’s Plaza Hotel, where she and her family stayed during the Second World War to escape occupied France, she recalls recklessly throwing toys down the mail chute. But outside, in the city, she saw people with nothing.
‘On the streets of New York, I saw people living in poverty as we passed through Harlem to go to the zoo or to Long Island. I was struck by the disparities and inequality,’ says Albina.
She remembers ‘frozen people, in rags in the icy cold,’ and one occasion in Central Park being forbidden to play with Black children.
It was confusing to Albina, whose own heritage was mixed. It spurred her to grow up into a politically engaged teen, who fought with her father over her education, and eventually set up a successful film company.
However, she found real purpose with the birth of her only child, François-Xavier, in 1961.With his arrival, Albina felt ‘profoundly calm, full of happiness, and overwhelmed.’ Her world finally made sense.
As he grew up, François-Xavier (Or FX as he was affectionately known) followed in the aviation footsteps of his pilot father, Bruno. Frustrated that he couldn’t be the first man on the moon, he set his sights on joining Air-Glaciers, a Swiss rescue aviation company, which he achieved.
‘He risked his life many, many times – in the fog, in the wind, near dangerous electric lines. François was very courageous and very, very devoted to rescuing,’ remembers Albina.
Then came the winter of 1986, when she received a devastating phone call from Bruno: François had been killed in a helicopter crash. He was 24. ‘My life ended then, on January 14. I was completely destroyed. François was my priority all my life, and my priority was gone.’
Albina fell into a deep depression that lasted nearly a decade. Though she continued to work, all meaning had vanished.
She had inherited millions when her father died six years earlier – a fortune she had left untouched, intending it for her son. But now, she couldn’t bear to keep it.
So, Albina sold everything: paintings, jewellery, furniture, her home, even her film company, to the tune of £100 million. It was three-quarters of her assets which she used to found FXB Foundation, in François-Xavier’s name. The rest she reinvested in real estate and her hotel business.
It was not a difficult decision.
‘For me, it was natural. No longer having a son, I wanted to continue François’ rescue mission, but in a larger sense. Selling it all felt very relieving. I was in harmony with my beliefs. I could repair something of the dysfunction of the world, particularly the huge inequalities I’d seen.’
She threw herself into tackling the AIDS epidemic, which was disproportionately affecting the poor in the 1980s and 1990s – especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty, weak health systems and gender inequality increased risk and curtailed access to care.
Through the Foundation, Albina launched NGOs and university centres across America, and homes of ‘tender loving care’ for AIDS orphans in Washington, Thailand, Brazil, and Colombia. She brought healthcare and education to India and Africa and helped millions out of extreme poverty.
Philanthropy helped lift the cloud she lived under. ‘Thank God I had my work. It took my mind off the grief. It took me a long time to feel that I wasn’t totally vulnerable and destroyed,’ she says.
It also helped Albina realise she wasn’t alone.
‘When I went to Lebanon during the war to bring food and medicines to refugees on both sides, I saw that I was just part of the general human condition – so full of suffering and loss. Those people hadn’t just lost one child. They’d lost several. Whole families. I thought: “You’ve got to pull your socks up, Albina. Come on.”’
She has worked tirelessly ever since, as what Albina calls a ‘repairer of dysfunctioning worlds’. She has met Nelson Mandela, been honoured with countless awards, and – most importantly- through FXB Global, helped millions lift themselves out of poverty across 20 countries.
The FXB Village programme is designed to help people attain financial independence, beginning with providing families with basics like food, schooling and health care, while they learn money management, get access to loans and gain seed capital to start small businesses.
Now, living between Paris, Switzerland and Portugal, Albina leads a modest life that reflects her values. She says she owns nothing of material value, besides one Suzuki car in Portugal.
‘I live comfortably. I already feel I’ve got too much. I hardly ever buy clothes. The ones I’ve had for 50 years are fine. They can go on until they don’t work anymore. I don’t go into shops. It’s boring. You could use your time doing much more productive things.’
‘I don’t understand the point of wanting glitzy stuff around you,’ Albina adds. ‘I was looking at my silver photo frames the other day, and I’ve decided I’m going to sell them all and use the money for the foundation. What matters is the photograph in them. Stuff doesn’t matter. What does is relationships, and love.’
Looking back over her 86 years, Albina is full of laughter and energy. She talks at 100-miles an hour and is still fired up with passion and ideas about how we can all help fix inequality. She would like to see billionaires for example taxed a percentage of their profits with the money going into NGOs – because in her opinion governments do a terrible job of running countries.
With her work, Albina – like her son – has ‘fulfilled’ her ‘contract with life’.
‘I’ve done what I was supposed to do,’ she adds. ‘I feel content now, and very much that I can die at peace.’
Phoenix Rising: A Woman’s Story of Love, Loss & the Will To Change the World by Albina Du Boisrouvray (£27.50) is published by Nomad Publishing later this month.
