Princess Marina Sturdza

Princess Marina Nicole Sturdza (25 April 1944 – 24 October 2017) was a Romanian princess and humanitarian activist. She is an aristocrat and member of the House of Sturdza.

Early life

Marina Nicole Sturdza was born a princess in Romania on 25 April 1944, in Brasov, Transylvania. Both of her parents came from Romanian aristocracy; her birth father was Prince Ion Sturdza (of the aristocratic Sturdza family, who had been the ruling family of Moldavia) and her mother Princess Ioana Soutzo. They divorced when Marina was very young.

One year after King Michael's abdication in 1947, Sturdza's parents fled Romania under pseudonyms. Marina's grandmother (with whom she stayed for a while) put her on a train to Switzerland. She was sedated so as not to speak Romanian and thus betray her national origin when meeting a diplomat by the Swiss border, where she was reunited with her parents in Zürich. The family later moved to Canada; where Marina resided in a single-room schoolhouse. The family moved to Toronto eight months later.

She had one stepdaughter and two step-grandchildren.