Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor willed the bulk of her $600 million fortune to the AIDS charities she founded, The New York Post has learned.
The veteran screen star, who died of congestive heart failure in Los Angeles last Wednesday at the age of 79, became one of the first high-profile Tinseltowners to throw her support behind HIV/AIDS research in the 1980s. Liz launched amfAR, her first AIDS charity, in 1985. She later spearheaded the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and backed Washington’s Whitman-Walker Clinic for HIV/AIDS patients.
Her famed jewelry collection will be auctioned off to benefit both the organizations. As of 2002, the jewelry collection had an estimated value of $150 million. Her perfume brand, White Diamonds, remains a bestseller, and combined with other brands Passion and Passion for Men, Taylor’s scents brought in an estimated $69 million at retail worldwide last year, according to tracking firm Euromonitor International.
Despite The Post report, the dame’s four children, Michael and Christopher Wilding and Lisa Todd Maria Burton, believe that Taylor’s gay assistant — Jason Winters — will get her cash when the will is read, which could be as early as this week. They met via her work for AIDS victims in the late 1990s and the friendship blossomed into one so endearing some close to the cinema icon wondered if the octo-bride and Winters were actually secretly romping.
