‘Heartbroken’ Branson announces death of wife
A “heartbroken” Virgin Group founder Richard Branson has announced the death of his wife Joan Templeman.
Branson and Templeman married in 1989 on his private Necker Island in the Caribbean.
They share two adult children,
A second daughter, Clare Sarah, was born three months premature and died at four days old.
Writing on social media, Branson said his wife, who was 80, was his “best friend” and “guiding light”.
“She was the most wonderful mum and grandmum our kids and grandkids could have ever wished for.
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“She was my best friend, my rock, my guiding light, my world.
“Love you forever, Joan x.”
Branson did not reveal his wife’s cause of death.
Templeman and Branson at Hollywood Walk Of Fame ceremony in 2018. Photo: AAP
In an article for the Virgin website celebrating Templeman’s 70th birthday, Branson previously said he fell in love with her “from the first moment I saw her” as she worked in a bric-a-brac shop in London’s Westbourne Grove.
Branson recalled he had to “persistently hang around the shop and buy countless objects”, including an old advertising sign, before the pair started to date.
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Posing for a family photo before setting out to climb Mont Blanc in the Alps. Photo: AAP
In the piece, Branson said Templeman was a “very private person” who had “always stood by me mentally, emotionally and spiritually”.
“From the beginning Joan was a very private person, and the over four decades we have been together she has remained so,” he wrote.
“She has always been keen to avoid the public eye, to the point that she has never given an interview. However, that just changed when she did her first ever interview for an upcoming film about my ballooning adventures.”
Fortune magazine reports that in 1978 Branson initially offered just $US100,000 ($A155,000) for what would become Necker Island; it had an asking price of $6 million, and the real estate agent simply ignored his offer.
“Upon hearing about a beautiful island in the British Virgin Islands up for sale, I called the people selling it to inquire. We were still in the early days of Virgin Records and I definitely did not have the cash to buy it – but try telling that to a fool in love!” he wrote in his blog post.
A year later, with no other buyers and Virgin Records doing well, Branson bought the 30-hectare island for $180,000.
It remains the family’s home and was also the wedding venue for the couple’s children.
Holly married shipbroker and investor Freddie Andrewes in a sunset ceremony in December 2011. Brother Sam wed a former flame of Prince William, Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, in March 2013.
Branson is one of Britain’s most successful businessmen. He founded Virgin Records in the 1970s, before expanding into other industries such as air travel, broadband and space tourism.
-with AAP
