Michaela Denis

Michaela Denis ( Holdsworth; 28 August 1914 – 4 May 2003) was a British-born wildlife documentary film-maker and presenter, who worked with her husband, Armand Denis.

Life Michaela Holdsworth was born in London, and brought up by her White Russian mother and grandmother after her father, an archaeologist, was killed in the First World War when she was three months old. She won a scholarship to fashion school, and trained as a dress designer in Paris, returning to London at the outbreak of the Second World War. She then became engaged to an American admiral and travelled to New York, but after some time in America, and after delaying her wedding, she met and began an affair with Armand Denis, a Belgian-born adventurer and filmmaker who had already had wide experience of making documentary films in remote areas around the world, many made with his first wife, Leila (Roosevelt) Denis. Armand and Leila Denis divorced, and, in 1948, Michaela and Armand were married by special licence in Potosi, Bolivia. She published such books as Leopard in My Lap (1955) and Ride on a Rhino (1960).

The couple made their home in Nairobi, Kenya. Armand Denis died in 1971. Michaela then apparently discovered she had healing powers, and opened a spiritual healing clinic at their home. In 1975 she married her lawyer, Sir William O'Brien Lindsay, the former Chief Justice of the Sudan, who died in his sleep three months later. She also dealt in property in Kenya.

Michaela Denis died in Nairobi in 2003, aged 88.