Princess Teresa of Orléans and Bragança, Last Surviving Sister-In-Law of the Countess of Paris, Passes Away

D. Teresa, wearing Yves Saint Laurent, appears in Vogue’s 1970 “10 Best Dressed Women of the World” List Photograph (c) Richard Avedon

Princess Teresa of Orléans and Bragança died yesterday (26 June 2020) in Rio de Janeiro. Teresa was ninety-one years-old. The princess was the widow of Prince João of Orléans and Bragança.

Teresa in 1956 Photograph (c) O Semanário

1956: Didu (far left) and Teresa (far right) with Didu’s daughter Lilian Photograph (c) Revista da Semana

Teresa (or Tereza) de Jesus Cesar Leite was born on 11 January 1929 at Uba, Minas Gerais. She was the daughter of José da Silva Leite and Branca Queiroz Cesar dos Santos. In the 1950s, Teresa married Carlos Eduardo “Didu” de Sousa Campos, the son of Vilobaldo Machado de Sousa Campos, a former director of the Banco do Brasil, and his wife Letícia Dias. Teresa was Didu’s second wife. The couple had one child, a son, Diduzinho (who predeceased his mother). Teresa and Didu lived a jet-set lifestyle in their four-storey, twenty-room mansion in Copacabana. In the 1970s, the couple separated. On 28 January 1986, Didu de Souza Campos died in Rio de Janeiro after suffering a heart attack; he was seventy-two years-old.

Teresa de Sousa Campos

The Imperial Siblings of Brazil: Prince João; Princess Isabelle, Countess of Paris; Prince Pedro Gastão; Princess Teresa In the background: Princess Maria Elisabeth, wife of Prince Pedro Henrique, and Dom Duarte, Duke of Braganza

On 29 April 1990 at Petrópolis, Teresa married in a civil ceremony Prince João of Orléans and Bragança, son of Prince Pedro de Alcântara of Orléans and Bragança, Prince of Grão Pará, and his wife Princess Elisabeth (née Countess Dobrzensky von Dobrzenicz). Teresa and João celebrated their religious wedding on 11 May 1990 in Rio de Janeiro. Residing in Paraty for much of their marriage, Prince João and Princess Teresa were together for fifteen years before Prince João passed away in 2005 at the age of eighty-eight. 

Thank you to my dear friend Astrid Bodstein Romêo for notifying me of this news.