Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark, Countess of Monpezat, (born Mary Elizabeth Donaldson; 5 February 1972) is an Australian-born member of the Danish royal family. She is married to Frederik, Crown Prince of Denmark, the heir apparent to the Danish throne, making Crown Princess Mary the likely next Queen of Denmark as queen consort.
The couple met at the Slip Inn, a pub in Sydney when the prince was visiting Australia during the 2000 Summer Olympics. Their official engagement in 2003 and their marriage the following year was the subject of extensive attention from Australian and European news media, which portrayed the marriage as a modern "fairytale" romance between a prince and a commoner.
Since her marriage, the Crown Princess has carried out engagements on behalf of her mother-in-law the Queen and currently serves as patron of over 30 charitable organisations, including the United Nations Population Fund, the European regional office of the World Health Organization, the Danish Refugee Council and Julemærkefonden. She founded her award-winning social organisation the Mary Foundation in 2007. In 2019, she was made a rigsforstander which allows her to act as regent when the Queen and Crown Prince Frederik are abroad, due to her eldest son Prince Christian, having not yet reached adulthood.
Early life
Mary Elizabeth Donaldson was born 5 February 1972 at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Battery Point, Hobart. She is youngest of four children to Scottish parents, Henrietta (née Horne), an executive assistant to the vice-chancellor of the University of Tasmania, and Prof. John Dalgleish Donaldson, an academic and mathematics professor. Her paternal grandfather was Captain Peter Donaldson (1911–1978). She was named after her grandmothers, Mary Dalgleish and Elizabeth Gibson Melrose, and was born and raised in Hobart, Australia. She has two older sisters, Jane Stephens and Patricia Bailey, and an older brother, John Stuart Donaldson. Her mother died from complications following heart surgery on 20 November 1997 when Mary was 25. In 2001, her father married the British author and novelist Susan Moody (née Horwood).
During her childhood, she was involved in sports and other extracurricular activities both at school and elsewhere. She studied music, playing piano, flute, and clarinet, also playing basketball and hockey.
Education
In 1974, she began schooling at Clear Lake City Elementary School in Houston, Texas, when her father a professor of applied mathematics, worked at the Johnson Space Center. She then moved to Sandy Bay, Tasmania, from 1975 to 1977. Her primary education, from 1978 to 1983, was at Waimea Heights with her secondary schooling (1984–1987) being at Taroona High School, and matriculation (1988–1989) at Hobart College. She studied at the University of Tasmania from 1990 to 1994, graduating with a combined Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws degree on 27 May 1995. Between 1994 and 1996, she attended a graduate program and qualified with certificates in advertising from the Advertising Federation of Australia (AFA) and direct marketing from the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA).
Her native language is English, and she studied French during her secondary education. In 2002, she briefly worked as an English tutor in Paris while dating Crown Prince Frederik. After moving to Denmark and prior to her marriage, Donaldson studied Danish as a foreign language at Studieskolen in Copenhagen in 2003.
Career
She worked for Australian and global advertising agencies after graduating in 1995. Upon graduation she moved to Melbourne to work in advertising. She became a trainee in marketing and communications with the Melbourne office of DDB Needham, taking a position of account executive. In 1996, she was employed by Mojo Partners as an account manager. In 1998, six months after her mother's death, she resigned and travelled to America and Europe. In Edinburgh, she worked for three months as an account manager with Rapp Collins Worldwide; then, in early 1999, she was appointed as an account director with the international advertising agency Young & Rubicam in Sydney.