Ruth Lilly

Ruth Lilly (August 2, 1915 – December 30, 2009) was an American philanthropist, the last surviving great-grandchild of Eli Lilly, founder of the Eli Lilly and Company pharmaceutical firm, and heir to the Lilly family fortune. A lifelong resident of Indianapolis, Indiana, Ruth Lilly is estimated to have given away nearly $800 million of her inheritance during her lifetime, mostly in support of the arts, education, health, and environmental causes in Indianapolis and in Indiana.

Lilly made major direct donations to organizations in addition to gifts made through the Lilly Endowment, her family's private foundation, and in conjunction with the Ruth Lilly Philanthropic Foundation, the charitable organization established in her name in 2002. Both of these foundations continue Lilly's legacy of charitable support. Lilly's major gifts include those to the Chicago-based Poetry Foundation, Americans for the Arts in Washington, D.C., and Indiana University, especially its programs and buildings on the Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis campus.

Early life and family Ruth Lilly, the daughter of Ruth (née Brinkmeyer) and Josiah K. Lilly Jr., was born on August 2, 1915, in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was elder of their two children.

Her great-grandfather, Colonel Eli Lilly, founded Eli Lilly and Company in 1876. Her grandfather, Josiah K. Lilly Sr., succeeded Colonel Lilly as president of the pharmaceutical company in 1898 and became chairman of the board in 1932. Her father, Josiah K. Lilly Jr., joined the family firm in 1914 and served as its president (1948–53) and chairman of the board (1953–66). Her brother, J. K. (Joe) III, joined the family business in 1939, but resigned from the firm in 1948 and did not succeed his father as president.

Ruth became the last surviving great-grandchild of Colonel Lilly in 1995 on the death of her brother and heiress to the Lilly family's pharmaceutical fortune. Lilly's cousin, Evelyn Lilly Lutz, the only surviving child of Evelyn (Fortune) and Eli Lilly Jr., died in 1970.

Ruth and her brother grew up in Indianapolis, where she remained a lifelong resident. She also attended Herron School of Art in Indianapolis.

In 1941 Lilly married Guernsey van Riper Jr., an author and the son of an Indianapolis advertising executive. They divorced in 1981 and had no children. Lilly lived a life of quiet seclusion. It was also reported that when Lilly was in her early seventies her health improved after she began taking Prozac, an antidepressant her family's pharmaceutical firm brought to market in 1988. Rather than focusing on a specific area, she gave directly to a variety of causes, although she had a particular interest in poetry. The donations included an unexpected pledge valued at $100 million, mostly in Eli Lilly and Company stock, to Chicago-based Poetry magazine in November 2002. At the time of Lilly's headline-making donation, the monthly publication had a circulation of approximately 12,000 and its non-profit publisher, the Modern Poetry Association, had a four-person staff and an annual budget of less than $700,000. Soon afterwards the association was renamed the Poetry Foundation. In addition, her donations have endowed annual fellowships to young poets since 1989. The awards have expanded from a single fellowship (until 1995) to two fellowships (1996 to 2007) and five in 2008. The Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship was renamed the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships after receipt of a gift from the Dorothy Sargen Rosenberg Memorial fund in 2013. The fellowships are open to all U.S. poets between the age of twenty-one and thirty-one. The amount of the individual fellowships has increased from $15,000 to $25,800.

Over the years Lilly made donations to numerous colleges and universities, most of them located in Indiana, including Indiana University, DePauw University, Butler University, and Wabash College, among others.

Lilly spent the last years of her life at Twin Oaks, an Indianapolis home that was once owned by Isabel and Lyman S. Ayres II, the grandson of Lyman S. Ayres, founder of the L. S. Ayres and Company department stores. Lilly's parents purchased the Ayres's Colonial Revival-style home on Kessler Boulevard in 1955 and renovated it in a European style. In 1963 the Lilly family purchased adjoining property to expand the estate to . Although Lilly's parents never made Twin Oaks their home, it served as Ruth's residence until her death in 2009 and as a gathering place for the family. A service in celebration of her life was held on January 11, 2010, at Indianapolis's Christ Church Cathedral, where she had been a member. Her remains are interred at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. IU's Center on Philanthropy, which is located on the IUPUI campus, was renamed the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy in 2013, following receipt of funding from the Lilly Endowment in 2012. Herron planned to use the Lilly funding it received to expand its graduate-degree offerings and other art programs, and to complete Eskenazi Hall, which houses the art and design school on the IUPUI campus.

Several other Indiana colleges and universities received gifts from Lilly, including Anderson University, Butler University, DePauw University, Franklin College, Hanover College, Marian University, the University of Indianapolis, and Wabash College, among others. She also made donations to Duke University in North Carolina and Tufts University in Massachusetts. Lilly has also been a benefactor to several Indianapolis-area schools, including Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School, Cathedral High School, Lutheran High School, The Orchard School, and Park Tudor School.

Many arts-related organizations have been recipients of her support, especially the Americans for the Arts, to whom she pledged a gift valued at $120 million in 2002. Most of the other arts groups have been located in Indiana and in Indianapolis: the Indianapolis Art Center, Indiana Symphony Orchestra, Indianapolis's ballet and opera troupes, the Indiana Repertory Theatre, Young Audiences of Indiana, WFYI Public Broadcasting, Conner Prairie, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, and the Indianapolis Zoo. Lilly was also contributor to the Heritage Museums and Gardens in Sandwich, Massachusetts, which her brother established as a tribute to their father. The Indiana University's Medical Library, initially established in 1908, has been renamed the Ruth Lilly Medical Library; it is located on the IU Medical Center campus in Indianapolis. In recognition of Lilly's estimated $2.7 million gift to IUPUI's Herron School of Art and Design in 2011, the school named its administrative offices in Eskenazi Hall the Ruth Lilly Dean's Suite in her honor. The Ruth Lilly Performance Hall, located in the University of Indianapolis's Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center, is named in Lilly's honor. The Indianapolis Art Center is the home of the Ruth Lilly Library. The Ruth Lilly Hospice of Clarion is located in Indianapolis. The Ruth Lilly Visitors Pavilion opened in 2010 at the Indianapolis Museum of Art's Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park. The Ruth Lilly YMCA Outdoor Center, which offers environmental education programming for school groups, is located at the Flat Rock River YMCA Camp in St. Paul, Indiana.