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Princess Ira von Fürstenberg (born April 18, 1940) is a European socialite, actress, jewelry designer, and a former public relations manager for the fashion designer Valentino Garavani.
The daughter of Prince Tassilo Egon Maria Karl George Leo von Fürstenberg and his half-American first wife, Clara Agnelli, a Fiat heiress, she was born Princess Virginia Carolina Theresa Pancrazia Galdina von Fürstenberg in Rome, Italy. Her maternal great-grandmother was a Kentucky heiress, Jane Campbell (Princess di San Faustino), and her brother, Prince Eduard Egon Peter Paul Giovanni von Fürstenberg, was better known as the fashion designer Egon von Fürstenberg. Her former sister in law is the fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg, and an uncle was Gianni Agnelli, the famous chairman of Fiat.
Princess Ira has been married twice and reportedly was a close companion and suspected lover of Prince Rainier III of Monaco after the death of his wife, the former Grace Kelly. She and the ruler of Monaco are both great-grandchildren of the Scottish-Bavarian aristocrat Lady Mary Victoria Hamilton, the wife of Prince Albert I of Monaco, though Ira is descended from her second marriage and Rainier from her first.
Her first husband, whom she married at Venice, Italy, on September 17, 1955, was Alfonso, Prince zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1924-2003). At the time of the wedding, the bride was 15, the groom, 31. They were divorced in 1960, and the marriage was annulled in 1969. They have two sons. The prince founded the Marbella Club, a renowned Spanish resort.
Her second husband was Francisco Pignatari (1916-1977), a Brazilian industrialist known as "Baby" Pignatari. They were married in Reno, Nevada, on January 12, 1961, and were divorced in Las Vegas, Nevada, in January 1964. They had no children.
Known for her plush form, sloe eyes, and gift for light comedy, Ira von Fürstenberg was a sumptuous star of European-made B-movies in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, starring in such films as "Dolls for an August Moon" (1970), "The Fifth Cord" (1971), the spy spoof "Matchless" (1966, costarring Patrick O'Neal), and "J'ai tué Raspoutine" (1967), and "Dead Run" (1967, costarring Peter Lawford).de:Ira von Fürstenberg