Teresa Heinz Kerry is widely known as the second wife of American attorney, politician and diplomat, John Forbes Kerry.
Teresa is a Portuguese-American businesswoman and philanthropist.
She was born Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões-Ferreira on October 5, 1938 in Maputo, Mozambique to Irene Thierstein and José Simões Ferreira Júnior, oncologist and tropical disease specialist.
Teresa has two siblings; José Pedro Simões-Ferreira and Margarida Helena Simões-Ferreira.
Her maternal grandfather was the scion of a Swiss-German family living in Malta, and her maternal grandmother was the half-French, half-Italian daughter of an Alexandrian shipowner who traded with Russia amid the Crimean War; both emigrated to Portuguese East Africa.
Teresa received a Bachelor of Arts in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa in 1960. She then graduated from the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Geneva in 1963 and moved to the United States to be an interpreter at the United Nations.
In 1966, Teresa married former U.S. Senator John Heinz and they remained married until he died in 1991. They had three sons; Henry John Heinz IV, André Thierstein Heinz and Christopher Drake Heinz.
In 1971, Teresa became a naturalized United States citizen.
Teresa Heinz and Senator John Kerry met at an Earth Day rally in 1990. This was the only reported time the duo met before Senator Heinz died in a plane crash on April 4, 1991.
Teresa and Kerry again met at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. She was a member of a State Department delegation appointed by then-President George H. W. Bush.
The pair began dating in 1993 and tied the knot on May 26, 1995, in Nantucket, Massachusetts.
In December 2009, Teresa revealed that she was being treated for breast cancer. Kerry disclosed that she had undergone several lumpectomies and would be following up with a targeted type of radiation therapy treatment called accelerated partial breast irradiation (APBI).
On July 7, 2013, Heinz was taken by ambulance to Nantucket Cottage Hospital after showing symptoms consistent with a seizure. She was described as being in a “critical but stable” condition. Kerry was subsequently flown to Massachusetts General Hospital for further medical treatment and tests, and doctors were able to rule out a heart attack, brain tumor, stroke, and other triggers.
On July 11, she was transferred to Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital to continue her recovery and was discharged on July 17, 2013, from Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston. She recovered at home following some limited out-patient treatment.
Teresa Heinz Kerry is Chair of the Heinz Endowments and the Heinz Family Philanthropies.