Teresa Heinz Kerry Biography

Political Relative / Philanthropist

Name at birth: Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira

Teresa Heinz Kerry is the wife of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and the former wife of the late Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania. Heinz Kerry was born in Mozambique, the daughter of a Portuguese medical doctor. She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, and later attended the University of Geneva. In 1966 she married Henry John Heinz III (known as John), a member of the Heinz ketchup and condiment family. A Republican, he was elected U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania in 1976, and remained in that post until he was killed in a plane crash in 1991. As his widow, Teresa Heinz has since overseen the Heinz family's charitable endowments, in which role she has particularly supported environmental causes in America and internationally. She first met Kerry in 1990 (at an Earth Day rally, according to her official bio) and they were reintroduced the year after John Heinz's death. The pair married in 1995. She was thrust into the spotlight in 2004, when John Kerry, a Democrat, ran for the presidency against the Republican incumbent, George W. Bush.

Extra credit: According to a 2003 article in USA Today, Heinz Kerry "speaks Portuguese, English, French, Spanish and Italian"... She had three children with John Heinz: H. John Heinz IV, Andre, and Christopher... Her stepchildren with John Kerry are Vanessa and Alexandra Kerry... Though a Republican when she married John Kerry, Heinz Kerry is now registered as a Democrat... For details on her counterpart in the 2004 elections, see our profile of Laura Bush... In 2005 it was reported that she dropped the name Kerry and now goes by Teresa Heinz.

Other philanthropists of the same era: media mogul Ted Turner and rock star Sir Bob Geldof.