Leila Pahlavi

Leila Pahlavi (; 27 March 1970 – 10 June 2001) was a princess of Iran. She was the youngest daughter of Mohammad Reza Shah the last Shah of Iran, and his third wife, Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi.

She was nine years old when she and her family were forced into exile as a result of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. She studied literature and philosophy at Brown University. She committed suicide at 31 years of age.

Early life

Leila Pahlavi was born on 27 March 1970 in Tehran, Iran. She was the fourth and youngest child of Mohammad Reza Shah, the last Shah of Iran, and Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi.

She had two elder brothers, an elder sister, and an elder half-sister, and lived in the Niavaran Palace in northern Tehran.

In exile

Princess Leila was nine years old when she and her family were forced into exile as a result of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Under political pressure, she and her family moved from Egypt (where she studied at the K-12 Cairo American College) to Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico, the United States, and Panama. She spoke Persian, English, and French fluently, as well as some Spanish and Italian.

A year before she died, she said in an interview: "I remain as Iranian as if I'd never left home."

Death

On Sunday 10 June 2001, Leila was found dead in her room in the Leonard Hotel in West London just before 19:30 BST by her doctor. She was 31 years of age. She was found to have more than five times the minimum lethal dose of Seconal, a barbiturate used to treat insomnia, in her system (her blood contained a Seconol level of 27.3mg per litre), along with a nonlethal amount of cocaine, the painkiller Palfium, and the sleeping tablet Rohypnol, having committed suicide.

She was found in bed, her body emaciated by years of anorexia, bulimia, and food intolerances. According to a report on her death, which included information from an autopsy conducted by the Westminster Coroner's Court, her doctor--who had prescribed 120 Palfiums and 100 Seconals on each of two separate occasions on 10 and 16 May 2001--said she stole prescriptions from his desk during an appointment. She was addicted to Seconal, typically taking 40 pills at once, rather than the prescribed two.

Aftermath Close family friends say that her brother Ali Reza Pahlavi became very depressed after the death of Leila, to whom he was very close. On 4 January 2011, after a long period of depression, he was found dead at his apartment in Boston, Massachusetts, from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in an apparent suicide.