Rosamind Julius

Rosamind Julius (30 November 1923 – 19 May 2010) was an English entrepreneur and furniture manufacturer. Together with her husband and her mother-in-law, they built up the Hille furniture company which used new British designers to create modernist furniture.

Life Rosamind Goldman was born in London in 1923. Her mother was born Rachel (or "Ray Hille") Hille. Her mother had married Morris Goldman and she had taken his name, but in 1932 they took over the Hille company and all of them changed their name to Hille. Goldman's early career was dictated by the second world war where she enlisted and worked for Louis Mountbatten. In 1944 she married Leslie Julius and in 1948 they had a daughter named Corinne Julius. Her husband had left the services as a Major and they both joined the company furniture business in 1945. They worked as a close team with credit being difficult to divide between them but her mother, Ray Hille, was also an important contributor to the company's success. Fred Scott designed the Supporto seating system in 1976 and it was launched in 1979. Meanwhile, they won contracts for British embassies, the Istanbul Hilton and the Unesco building in Paris. Their successful British designs were licensed overseas including the rights to manufacture tens of thousands of chairs for the Mexico Olympics.

The family stopped being involved in furniture in 1983 when they sold the business. Leslie Julius died in 1989, but Rosamind continued to lead. She was a fellow of the Royal College of Art and she and the designer Kenneth Grange led the organisation of an important conference in Aspen, Colorado in 1986 which helped to launch the work of the Spitting image designers Fluck and Law, the architect Norman Foster, the painter David Hockney and the fashion designer Bruce Oldfield.

She died a widow in 2010 in a hospital in Islington.