The daughter of the 9th Duke of Wellington, Lady Charlotte Wellesley, a 32-year-old descendant of Queen Victoria, has since 2016 been a bonafide stalwart of the Sunday Times Young Rich List. This year’s iteration, revealing the ‘35 richest people under 35 in the UK’, has placed the elegant aristocrat in second place (the Duke of Westminster is first) estimating her net worth at £2.167 billion.
It is not Lady Charlotte’s blue-blooded roots, however, that set on the path to becoming the UK’s richest young woman, but rather her marriage: to Colombian-American financier Alejandro Santo Domingo, of the eponymous South American brewing dynasty.
Lady Charlotte, daughter of Princess Antonia of Prussia (now Duchess of Wellington) and therefore great-great-granddaughter of the late German Emperor Wilhelm II, was born on 8 October 1990 at St Mary’s Hospital in London. She grew up at Stratfield Saye House, her family’s Hampshire seat. After attending Wycombe Abbey, a high-performing girls’ boarding school in Buckinghamshire, Charlotte went on to Oxford University to read archaeology and anthropology. Clearly academic, she also has a creative streak, having assisted fashion photographers as a producer.
Her 2016 nuptials to the now 46-year-old billionaire Alejandro Santo Domingo, the uncle of Tatiana Santo Domingo (wife of Andrea Casiraghi), was the undisputed wedding of the year. The bride wore a structured off-the-shoulder Emilia Wickstead dress with a cathedral-length veil embroidered with polka dots.
The wedding took place in Íllora in Spain, at a 16th-century church in a quiet hill town near Granada. The reception was held at the Duke of Wellington’s spectacular Spanish estate in the nearby countryside, Dehesa Baja. Awarded by the Spanish Government to Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington, in 1813 as a reward for support Britain gave to Spain during the Peninsular War against Napoleon, Dehesa Baja has since been passed down through the ducal line.
Attendees included Queen Camilla (then Duchess of Cornwall), Spain’s former King Juan Carlos I, supermodel Eva Herzigova, as well as Harrow-educated singer James Blunt, who is married to the bride’s cousin, Sofia Wellesley. The wedding was reportedly announced in July 2015 via a simple note in The Daily Telegraph and welcomed guests largely from the countries of Colombia, the United States and the UK.
Hugh Grosvenor and Olivia Henson will marry next year on 7 June at Chester Cathedral
Alejandro was linked to heiress Amanda Hearst and model Eugenia Silva before meeting Lady Charlotte, whose ancestor the 1st Duke of Wellington commanded the allied army that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. According to the Telegraph, Alejandro has been described by friends as ‘like Prince Charming, almost too much… he really is a nice guy, clever and kind’. The paper reported in 2017 that the pair have accumulated their fortune through a combination of ‘inheritance, brewing and investment’. Lady Charlotte and Alejandro have two children, one born in 2017 and one in 2019.
More recently, Charlotte has become a business partner to restaurateur Juan Santa Cruz, co-designing and launching a New York outpost of his A-list favourite Notting Hill haunt, Casa Cruz. Dubbed the ‘buzziest slice of London’s nightlife’ on the Upper East Side by the Wall Street Journal Magazine, the Manhattan hotspot has been frequented by the likes of Nicky Hilton Rothschild and Katie Holmes.
