Millionaire who travels by Tube

VIVIEN DUFFIELD became one of Britain's richest women when she inherited a pounds 45m fortune from her father, the property developer Charles Clore.

The 52-year-old philanthropist says she hates to waste a penny. Regular sightings are made of her in Marks & Spencer and on the Tube.

But thrift is not always in evidence. Since 1978 she has lived with Sir Jocelyn Stevens, with the couple dividing their time between houses in London, Hampshire, Scotland, Geneva and Gstaad in the Bernese Oberland.

She spent pounds 400,000 on her 40th birthday bash, and for Sir Jocelyn's 50th in 1982, they flew 130 guests to Gstaad and showered them with presents.

She was brought up in France, but doesn't recall leading a particularly lavish childhood. She completed her education at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she read medieval languages.

She married John Duffield, a stockbroker, who handled her assets shrewdly, and by the end of the 1960s she had become a tax exile in Switzerland. The couple had two children, but divorced in 1976.

She set up her first foundation in 1967, and when her father died in 1979, he left her and her brother large fortunes, as well as pounds 100m to establish the Clore Foundation.

One of her more public landmarks is the Clore Gallery, a memorial to her father which houses the Turners at the Tate Gallery on London's Embankment.

A tireless worker for charity, she reckons she has given away a total of more than pounds 90m.

She has worked for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and she is a former vice-chair of Great Ormond Street Wishing Well Appeal. She has also served on the Royal Marsden Hospital Cancer Appeal.

She donates substantially to Jewish causes and hospitals, but she is best known for her patronage of the arts, pouring millions of her personal fortune into Covent Garden.