Her amazing wealth and generosity seem to be matched by only one thing - her determination to be alone.
Huguette Clark is so rich she gave a friend a painting worth £10million. And she's so reclusive even family and trusted staff of 30 years' service have never even seen her.
No wonder this stubbornly private woman's life has captivated the US.
The 104-year-old heiress, who's worth $1billion - £630million - has a huge estate in California and one in Connecticut. She pays housekeepers to ensure they are immaculate even though she hasn't set foot in them for 50 years.
She also owns the largest home in New York's upmarket Fifth Avenue and keeps it fully staffed to maintain the scores of art masterpieces. But 22 years ago she swapped the 42-room luxury apartment for a drab hospital room in the city.
Now the woman who hasn't been photographed for 80 years refuses to take calls from her relatives and friends and communicates only with her lawyer. And if a furious row hadn't erupted between her family and legal representatives over control of her immense fortune, her wish to live her last days away from the spotlight would have come true.
Instead, as details emerge of Huguette's extraordinary riches and eccentricities, the US has become hooked on news of the nation's never-been-seen celebrity.
Journalist Bill Dedman tracked her down to the Beth Israel Medical Center but was denied permission to see her.
He says: "Huguette's friends say she checked herself in to be more comfortable. She wasn't sick, she was reclusive.
Huguette is the youngest child of William Clark, an entrepreneur born in 1839 who made his fortune in copper, railroads, banks and newspapers. At one time his wealth was neck-and-neck with the US's richest ever person, John Rockefeller.
But while history has been kind to humanitarian Rockefeller, William's reputation was blighted by accusations of brutal business tactics and corruption.
One contemporary described him as having "icicles in his handshake".
William, who was of Scots-Irish descent, had a tireless drive for making money. One of his copper mines brought in the equivalent today of £7million a month. And one of the rail stops he owned was then a little-known place called Las Vegas. The city is now in Clark County which was named after the businessman.
William's first wife, Kate, died in 1893, leaving him four grown-up children.
In 1904, while enjoying his position as a senator after buying votes, William announced he had taken a second wife in France three years earlier.
He was 62 and wife Anna Eugenia La Chapelle was 23 - younger than his children. Even more shocking was that Anna had been William's ward, who had come to him as a teenager for support.
Spectacular They had two daughters, Andreé then Huguette, who was born in Paris in 1906.
The young girls had a charmed upbringing. They lived in a spectacular house William built in Fifth Avenue which had 121 rooms, four art galleries, Turkish baths, a vaulted rotunda and a subway line to bring in the seven tons of coal used every day. All for a family of four.
William spent £5million on the house - three times what Yankee Stadium cost a decade later - and treasures included a Louis XVI salon, a marble statue by Rodin, oak ceilings from Sherwood Forest, and paintings by Degas, Rubens and Rembrandt.
Huguette attended an exclusive school where she learned politics and was taught dance by Isadora Duncan, who virtually invented modern dance.
But Huguette's gilded life darkened when her beloved sister was killed by meningitis, aged 16.
"When Andreé died in 1922, it left a hole in her life," says Huguette's greathalf-nephew Ian Devine.
William passed away in his Fifth Avenue house in 1925, aged 86. The majority of his estate, worth £2.5billion today, went to Huguette and the four older children.
Huguette, then 18, also inherited an allowance for three years of up to £70,000 a year, equal to £1million today. The heiress became a regular in the society pages and she married law student William Gower in 1928.
The New York Herald said: "No married couple ever started married life under more brilliant auspices."
But within two years they divorced - a huge scandal in those days. Huguette later denied she was engaged to Edward Fitzgerald, the Duke of Leinster, who bragged to a British bankruptcy court he had gone to America looking for a rich wife. And Huguette was mocked in newspaper cartoons once again. It was around this time she stepped into the shadows for good. She never remarried, had no children and confided to friends that her great wealth was a "menace to happiness".
After the death of her mum in 1963 her collection of French dolls became the centre of her world. She once bought two first-class seats to Paris: one for a doll and the other for her physician to make sure it arrived safely.
Delia Healey was NEPHEW Huguette's maid from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. The daily duties were making Huguette's lunch - usually crackers with sardines from a can - looking after her dolls, and using the new-fangled video recorder to tape every episode of The Flintstones.
She was never seen but a quiet, childish voice with a French accent would call Robert Samuels almost every day. It would be Huguette with yet another urgent request for the dolls.
Robert, of French & Co, would sort out the problem but in 25 years he never talked face-to-face with his client.
The only friend known to visit Huguette regularly in her later years was Suzanne Pierre, the wife of Huguette's physician.
Suzanne was also her social secretary, taking messages to lawyers.
She helped Huguette anonymously sell antiques such as the £5million Stradivarius violin called The Virgin which her mum gave her for her 50th birthday.
Huguette paid Suzanne a yearly bonus - once it was a £10million painting.
Wallace Bock, Huguette's lawyer, says her hearing and eyesight have diminished but her mind is clear and he receives frequent instructions from her by phone. He adds: "She doesn't care about publicity." But he faces accusations of exploiting her after her £1million donation to build a security system at a settlement in Israel where his daughter lives. Now, of all the unanswered questions about Huguette's secluded life, people still want to know if her fabulous wealth really was a menace to her happiness.
Howard Hughes spent his final 20 years in darkened hotel suites with a phobia of germs forcing him to shun the outside world.
The Texan, left, was a billionaire film magnate and aviation pioneer who died in 1976 at the age of 70.
Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize but she has declined almost every interview and public engagement since it was published in 1960. The 84-year-old, left, lives a quiet life paid for by the book's royalties.
J.D. Salinger, left, became increasingly withdrawn as his 1951 novel, The Catcher in the Rye, became a success.
Apart from a 1974 interview with the New York Times, he remained silent. Salinger died in January aged 91.
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