Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster (born 29 January 1991), styled as Earl Grosvenor until August 2016, is a British

aristocrat The aristocracy is historically associated with "hereditary" or "ruling" social class. In many states, the aristocracy included the upper class of people (aristocrats) with hereditary rank and titles. In some, such as ancient Greece, ancient R ...

, billionaire, businessman, and owner of

Grosvenor Group Grosvenor Group Limited is an internationally diversified property group, which traces its origins to 1677 and has its headquarters in London, England. It has a global reach, now in 62 international cities, with offices in 14 of them, operated on ...

. He became

Duke of Westminster Duke of Westminster is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created by Queen Victoria in 1874 and bestowed upon Hugh Grosvenor, 3rd Marquess of Westminster. It is the most recent dukedom conferred on someone not related to the ...

on 9 August 2016, on the death of his father Gerald, 6th Duke of Westminster. As of 2021, the Duke and his family were 12th on the ''

Sunday Times Rich List The ''Sunday Times Rich List'' is a list of the 1,000 wealthiest people or families resident in the United Kingdom ranked by net wealth. The list is updated annually in April and published as a magazine supplement by British national Sunday new ...

'' with an estimated net worth of £10 billion. He was the world's richest person aged under 30.

Early life

Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor is the third child and only son of

Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster Major General Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, (22 December 1951 – 9 August 2016), was a British landowner, businessman, philanthropist, Territorial Army general, and peer. He was the son of Robert Grosvenor, 5th Duke of W ...

, and his wife Natalia (''

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

'' Phillips). He was baptised into the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Brit ...

on 23 June 1991. Through his mother, he is descended from the Romanov imperial family of Russia and maternally descends from

Nicholas I of Russia , house = Romanov-Holstein-Gottorp , father = Paul I of Russia , mother = Maria Feodorovna (Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg) , birth_date = , birth_place = Gatchina Palace, Gatchina, Russian Empire , death_date ...

, the Russian writer

Alexander Pushkin Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (; rus, links=no, Александр Сергеевич ПушкинIn pre-Revolutionary script, his name was written ., r=Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, p=ɐlʲɪkˈsandr sʲɪrˈɡʲe(j)ɪvʲɪtɕ ˈpuʂkʲɪn, ...

and his wife Natalia Nikolayevna Goncharova, as well as from Pushkin's great-grandfather—African freed slave turned Russian nobleman

Abram Petrovich Hannibal Abram Petrovich Gannibal, also Hannibal or Ganibal, or Abram Hannibal or Abram Petrov ( ru , Абра́м Петро́вич Ганниба́л; c. 1696 – 14 May 1781), was a Russian military engineer, general-in-chief, and nobleman of Afri ...

. Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor is also a descendant of the

Hetman of Zaporizhian Host The Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host ( uk, Гетьман Війська Запорозького, la, Cosaccorum Zaporoviesium Supremus Belli Dux) was the head of state of the Cossack Hetmanate in what is now Ukraine. The office was disestablishe ...

Petro Doroshenko through Natalia Nikolayevna Goncharova. She is the great-great-granddaughter of the famous Ukrainian Hetman. His elder sisters are Lady Tamara Katherine Grosvenor (married Edward van Cutsem, son of Hugh van Cutsem) and

Lady Edwina Louise Grosvenor Lady Edwina Louise Grosvenor (born 4 November 1981) is an English criminologist, philanthropist and prison reformer. She is a founder and a trustee of the charity The Clink, and founder of the charity One Small Thing. She is the sister of Hugh Gr ...

(married TV historian

Dan Snow Daniel Robert Snow (born 3 December 1978) is a British popular historian and television presenter. Early life and education Born in Westminster, London Dan Snow is the youngest son of Peter Snow, BBC television journalist, and Canadian Ann M ...

). The latter is a prison reformer and philanthropist, who co-founded The Clink Restaurants. The youngest sister is Lady Viola Georgina Grosvenor. The letters patent that created the

dukedom Dukedom may refer to: * The title and office of a duke * Duchy, the territory ruled by a duke * Dukedom, Kentucky and Tennessee, United States * ''Dukedom'' (game), a land management game See also * Lists of dukedoms Lists of dukedoms include: ...

provide that the title go to the eldest male heir. As a duke, he ranks highly in the

order of precedence in England and Wales The following is the order of precedence in England and Wales as of . Separate orders exist for men and women. Names in italics indicate that these people rank elsewhere—either higher in that table of precedence or in the table for the ot ...

Education

All the siblings were educated at a local state primary school, followed by a small private day school,

Mostyn House School Mostyn House School was a school that was originally opened in Tarvin, and moved to Parkgate, Cheshire, in 1855. From 1862 until it closed in 2010, it was run by the Grenfell family, originally as a boys' boarding school, and latterly as a co-educ ...

, near the family home of

Eaton Hall, Cheshire Eaton Hall is the country house of the Duke of Westminster. It is south of the village of Eccleston, in Cheshire, England. The house is surrounded by its own formal gardens, parkland, farmland and woodland. The estate covers about . The f ...

. He then attended Ellesmere College in Shropshire, from 2000 to 2009. From 2010 to 2013, he studied countryside management at

Newcastle University Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick unive ...

, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree with upper second-class honours.

Career

After university, the then Earl Grosvenor, as he was at the time, worked in estate management at Wheatsheaf Investment from 2013 to 2014, and the

from 2014 to 2015, before becoming Accounts Manager at Bio-bean, an energy company, in January 2016. Upon his father's death, in August 2016, as well as the peerages, he inherited a wealth then estimated at £9 billion, with considerable trust funds for his sisters. This wealth is held in a trust, of which the 7th Duke of Westminster, as he became, is a

beneficial owner Beneficial owner is a legal term where specific property rights ("use and title") in equity belong to a person even though legal title of the property belongs to another person. Beneficial owner is subject to a state's statutory laws regulating i ...

but not the legal owner—an arrangement that received considerable press attention, owing to the

inheritance tax An inheritance tax is a tax paid by a person who inherits money or property of a person who has died, whereas an estate tax is a levy on the estate (money and property) of a person who has died. International tax law distinguishes between an e ...

exemption it confers.

Personal life

Little is publicly known about the duke's personal life. However, in October 2013, he was named a godfather to Prince George. In April 2020, the duke donated several million pounds in support of the

British government response to the COVID-19 pandemic In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, the UK Government introduced various public health and economic measures to mitigate its impact. Devolution meant that the four nations' administrative responses to the pandemic di ...

and the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

(NHS).

Arms

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Westminster, Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of 1991 births Living people People educated at Ellesmere College Alumni of Newcastle University Hugh Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster 7 English people of German descent English people of Russian descent People from Cheshire English landowners English billionaires English philanthropists People named in the Paradise Papers