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Gloria Vanderbilt Net Worth: Gloria Vanderbilt was an American socialite, fashion designer, actress, writer, and entrepreneur who had a net worth of $200 million at the time of her death in June 2019. Gloria was a member of the esteemed Vanderbilt family, and though she easily had the wealth and connections to live a lazy socialite life, Gloria embarked on a very successful career as a fashion designer and artist.After achieving some early success as an artist, Vanderbilt lent her name to a line of designer jeans and fragrances, which were sold at high-end department stores throughout the world. Her fashion career peaked in the 1980s, and she personally earned $10 million worth of royalties from her jeans in 1980 alone, which is the same as around $30 million today after adjusting for inflation. Decades later, she would claim that she earned far more money selling jeans than through inheritance. Of her fashion fortune vs. inherited wealth, Gloria famously said: “The money you make yourself is the only kind of money that has any reality.” Vanderbilt published six memoirs, three novels, and two art and home decor books. She co-authored the 2016 book “The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son On Life, Love, and Loss” with her son, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, and that year the two were the subjects of the HBO documentary “Nothing Left Unsaid: Gloria Vanderbilt & Anderson Cooper.”Vanderbilt Family Wealth: Gloria’s father, Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, was the great-grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. After adjusting for inflation, Cornelius Vanderbilt was one of the five wealthiest Americans of all time. When he died, Cornelius had a net worth equal to $185 billion. Cornelius earned his first fortune in shipping, but the extreme wealth came much later on in life from railroads and real estate.Early Life: Gloria Vanderbilt was born Gloria Laura Vanderbilt on February 20, 1924, in New York City. Her father, railroad heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, died of cirrhosis when Gloria was just 18 months old, so she was raised by her mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt (who was Reginald’s second wife), and her nanny, Emma Sullivan Kieslich. Vanderbilt and her half-sister, Cathleen, each inherited a half share of a $5 million trust fund (which is equal to roughly $70 million in today’s dollars) after their father’s death, and while Gloria was a minor, her mother controlled her share. Though Vanderbilt was baptized in the Episcopal church, her mother raised her in the Catholic Church after Reginald died. During Gloria’s youth, she often went to Paris with her mother, Kieslich, and her mother’s twin sister, Thelma Furness, who was the Prince of Wales’ mistress.Vanderbilt’s paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, thought that Gloria’s mother was an unfit parent and took her to court in 1934 to try to get custody of the 10-year-old girl. Gertrude gained custody of Gloria, and the custody battle was immortalized in the 1980 book “Little Gloria… Happy at Last” (written by Barbara Goldsmith) and a 1982 NBC miniseries of the same name. Vanderbilt’s mother was only allowed to see her on weekends and was no longer in charge of her daughter’s trust fund. After losing custody, Gloria’s mother still received $21,000 per year from the trust fund, but after Vanderbilt became old enough to control it herself, she cut her mother off. Gloria studied at the Greenvale School (Long Island, New York), Miss Porter’s School (Farmington, Connecticut), the Wheeler School (Providence, Rhode Island), and the Art Students League (New York City).Career: Vanderbilt began modeling as a teenager, appearing in “Harper’s Bazaar” magazine at age 15. From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, she pursued an acting career, studying with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse and making her stage debut in a 1954 Pocono Playhouse production of “The Swan.” Gloria played Elsie in a 1955 revival of “The Time of Your Life,” and she appeared on the TV series “Studio One in Hollywood” in 1957. Vanderbilt also guest-starred on “Adventures in Paradise” (1960) and “Shirley Temple’s Storybook: House Of Seven Gables” (1960) and appeared in the live televised dramas “Kraft Theatre” (1958) and “The United States Steel Hour” (1958). In 1981, she guest-starred as herself on a two-part episode of “The Love Boat.”Gloria turned her focus to the world of fashion when Glentex licensed some of her paintings for a line of stylish scarves in 1976. That year she launched a ready-to-wear fashion company called GV Ltd., and she later partnered with designer Mohan Murjani to create designer jeans with Vanderbilt’s signature on the back pocket. In 1978, she sold the Murjani Group the rights to her name, and she began selling shoes, dresses, bedding, blouses, and more under GV Ltd. From 1982 to 2002, L’Oreal released eight fragrances under the Gloria Vanderbilt name.Gloria was passionate about art and held exhibitions of her paintings, beginning in 1948. Her artwork was licensed by Hallmark Cards and textile manufacturer Bloomcraft, and she started creating art for glassware, pottery, and linen. Vanderbilt held art exhibitions at the Southern Vermont Arts Center in 2001 and 2007, and in 2007, she was a panelist at the center’s Annual Fall Show Exhibition. In celebration of her 90th birthday in 2014, a collection of Gloria’s art was displayed at the New York Design Center’s 1stdibs Gallery. Vanderbilt regularly wrote for “Vanity Fair,” “Elle,” and “The New York Times,” and she published several books, including “Gloria Vanderbilt Book of Collage” (1970), “Never Say Good-Bye: A Novel” (1989), “A Mother’s Story” (1995), and “It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir” (2004).Personal Life: At just 17 years old, Gloria married Hollywood agent/alleged mobster Pat DiCicco on December 28, 1941. They divorced after less than four years of marriage, and Vanderbilt later revealed that DiCicco referred to her as “Fatsy Roo” and abused her, stating “He would take my head and bang it against the wall…I had black eyes.” Gloria wed conductor Leopold Stokowski, who was 42 years older than her, on April 21, 1945, and before divorcing in 1955, they welcomed sons Leopold (better known as Stan) and Christopher on August 22, 1950, and January 31, 1952, respectively. Vanderbilt was also stepmother to Stokowski’s three daughters from his two previous marriages. Next, Gloria married director Sidney Lumet on August 28, 1956, and they divorced in 1963. On December 24, 1963, she married her fourth husband, author Wyatt Emory Cooper, and they had two children, Carter (born January 27, 1965) and Anderson (born June 3, 1967). Anderson grew up to become a CNN news anchor and host of the show “Anderson Cooper 360,” but in 1988, Carter tragically died by suicide at age 23 after prescription medicine he was taking reportedly caused a psychotic episode that led to him jumping from the family’s 14th-floor penthouse. Sadly, Vanderbilt lost Wyatt in 1978 after he died during open-heart surgery. Gloria was later in a long-term relationship with filmmaker/photographer Gordon Parks until he passed away in 2006, and she reportedly dated Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Roald Dahl, and Howard Hughes.Vanderbilt had given her psychiatrist, Dr. Christ Zois, and her lawyer, Thomas Andrews, power of attorney, and in 1993, she sued them, alleging that they had stolen millions of dollars from her and sold her business interests without consulting her. Andrews had passed away by the time the court ruled in Vanderbilt’s favor. She was awarded $1.79 million but never received it, and the New York Bar Association later awarded her $300,000 from the Victims of Fraud fund. Andrews had also failed to pay Gloria’s taxes for several years, so she owed $2.5 million to the IRS and had to sell a few of her homes to pay back the money.Death and Estate: On June 17, 2019, Vanderbilt passed away from stomach cancer at her Manhattan home at the age of 95. She is buried next to her late husband Wyatt and her son Carter in the Vanderbilt Mausoleum at Staten Island’s Moravian Cemetery. Though her son Anderson once said in an interview, “My mom’s made clear to me that there’s no trust fund,” Gloria left him most of her estate. Anderson also inherited all the property his mother owned, except for a Manhattan co-op (worth $1.2 million) that was left to her oldest son, Stan. The remaining son, Chris, was estranged from Vanderbilt and was left out of the will.

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