Dominique de Menil; Arts Patron, Rights Activist

HOUSTON —  Dominique de Menil, the French-born daughter of an oil industry pioneer who used her wealth to amass a great art collection, has died at the age of 89.

Aide Elsian Cousins said the arts patron and human rights activist died Wednesday of natural causes.

De Menil was president of the Carter-Menil Human Rights Foundation, which she founded in 1985 with former President Carter. In a statement, Carter called De Menil a “human rights hero.”

De Menil and her late husband owned a collection of more than 10,000 pieces ranging from Cubist paintings to primitive tribal artifacts. They built the Menil Collection Museum near downtown Houston to house it.

She also founded Houston’s Rothko Chapel, a nondenominational place of worship. The chapel is named for artist Mark Rothko, whom she commissioned to design it.

De Menil’s father was physicist Conrad Schlumberger, who in the 1920s developed a device that revolutionized oil exploration by helping locate underground oil fields. The business he founded, Schlumberger Co., is still an international giant in the oil service industry.

De Menil studied mathematics and physics in Paris in 1927 and 1928 and married John de Menil in 1931.

Ten years later, she left Paris to join her husband in Texas, where he had been sent the previous year to set up Schlumberger headquarters outside of Nazi-occupied France. John de Menil was Schlumberger president from 1967 to 1970 and died in 1973.

Dominique de Menil, who became a U.S. citizen in 1962, received the United States Medal of Arts from President Reagan in 1984.

In 1994, Fortune magazine estimated that De Menil’s personal fortune, including her art and Schlumberger stock, stood at more than $500 million.

She is survived by three daughters and two sons.