Tania Harcourt-Cooze

The Honourable Tania Rosamund Harcourt-Cooze is an English model and actress.

Early life and education The daughter of Major William Duke Coleridge, 5th Baron Coleridge of Ottery St Mary, a Major in the Coldstream Guards, and his first wife Everild Tania Hambrough, she is related to the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Career

Modelling Harcourt-Cooze completed an art history and drama degree at Fine Arts College in London.

She was spotted by Sarah Doukas, who dispatched her in 1986 to model for Armani and Versace in Italy, and she became a muse for Helmut Newton. She starred opposite singer George Michael in the video for "Father Figure". She appeared in the music video of the Kane Roberts song "Twisted" and was the “power drill girl” in Van Halen's "Poundcake" video in 1991.

Management Returning to England in 2001, she took over the management of The Chanter's House, the family's ancestral home in March 2002. The couple set up events management company Kubla Khan, through which to organise weddings, fashion shoots, residential art courses, exhibitions, house tours and cultural gatherings based around the house.

Media She came to public prominence again in 2008 with the airing of the fly-on-the-wall documentary, Willie's Wonky Chocolate Factory, centred on her husband's efforts to be one of the first Britons since the Cadbury family to grow, import and produce their own chocolate. a cocoa farm, in the Venezuelan cloud forest, Hacienda El Tesoro in the Henri Pittier National Park, near Choroni Beach, and planted more than 50,000 Criollo cocoa trees. In May 2010 she and her husband separated and they formalised a divorce in 2011.