Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans (February 21, 1920 – January 25, 2012) was an American heiress, activist, politician, and philanthropist. She was the granddaughter of Benjamin N. Duke and the great-granddaughter of Washington Duke, both tobacco and energy tycoons who helped start Duke University. Semans is remembered for her support and work towards promoting the arts and humanities through various philanthropic entities.
Life
Early life
Mary Duke Biddle was born in 1920 in New York City to Mary Lillian Duke Biddle and Anthony J. Drexel Biddle, Jr., and she lived a comfortable early life as the daughter of wealthy and prominent parents. Her mother was an aspiring opera singer and her father a retired World War I captain and a US ambassador. As a girl she learned to play the piano and attended the Hewitt School in New York. When she was fourteen years old, her parents divorced and she moved to Durham, North Carolina, to live with her grandmother.
College and later life
In 1935 she enrolled at Duke's Women's College where she met Josiah Charles Trent, a then medical student who eventually became the chief of Duke Hospital's Division of Thoracic Surgery. Mary and Josiah married in 1938 and together they had four daughters. The next year, Mary graduated from Duke, receiving a degree in Art History. However, just nine years later in 1948, Josiah died of lymphoma, leaving Mary a widow with four girls.
Pushed by her mother and with the support of her childhood governess, Mary went back to Duke University as a student for three more semesters. While back at Duke, she met James Hustead Semans, a urologic surgeon visiting from Atlanta. Five years later Mary remarried to James, who that year joined Duke's medical faculty. Together they had three children.
Exposure to the arts
Later in life Semans would be known for her support of the arts, a love for which she claimed to have had her entire life.
Growing up in New York City, Semans listened daily to her mother's opera singing and took private piano and dance lessons of her own. This exposure to music, along with frequent trips with her governess to opera houses, theatres, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art gave Semans an appreciation for art at an early age. While at one point she considered becoming a professional pianist, Semans stopped playing in college, a decision she said she later regretted. In an interview with North Carolina public television, Semans said that her love of the arts in combination with the Carolina area's lack of support for them inspired much of her philanthropic work.
Political career
For some time, Mary Duke Semans played an active role in the Durham City Government, although she never served in a post higher than a local office. In 1951 she ran alongside of Kathrine Everett for seats on the city council. They were both elected and together became the first two women ever on the board.
From 1953-55 she then served as Durham's mayor pro tempore, again Durham's first woman elected to such a post. While in office, she spent much of her time pushing for civil rights, funding for the arts, and affordable housing and healthcare.
Philanthropy
Semans created and supported many institutions at Duke University, in her hometown Durham, and in the larger State of North Carolina. Through these institutions Semans spent most of her life funding and promoting education, arts, and human rights in general.
Duke University
Mary Semans financially supported many projects at her alma mater Duke University throughout her life. She spent many years as chair of the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, started by and named after her mother, and she served 45 years as a trustee of The Duke Endowment. In 1982 she became the Endowment's first female chair, a position she retained until 2001. Through her position she started the Josiah Charles Trent Memorial Foundation, the Josiah Charles Trent Collection of the History of Medicine, and the Mary Duke Biddle Scholarship.
These projects were named after Josiah Trent, Semans's first husband, and Mary Duke Biddle, Semans's mother. She was also instrumental in the creation of the Duke University Museum of Art (later the Nasher Museum) and helped start Duke's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.