Laura Rose Lopes (née Parker Bowles; born 19 April 1978)^{[citation needed]} is an English art curator. She is the daughter of Queen Camilla and Andrew Parker Bowles, and the stepdaughter of King Charles III.

Laura Lopes
Portrait of Lopes in 2005 by Reginald Gray
Born	Laura Rose Parker Bowles (1978-04-19) 19 April 1978 (age 44) Swindon, Wiltshire, England
Occupation	Art curator[1][2]
Spouse	Harry Lopes ​ (m. 2006)​
Children	3
Parents	Andrew Parker Bowles Queen Camilla
Relatives	Tom Parker Bowles (brother) King Charles III (stepfather)

Biography

Early life

Laura Parker Bowles was born on 19 April 1978, the second child of army officer Andrew Parker Bowles and Camilla Shand (who would later marry Prince Charles and become Queen Consort).

She grew up at Bolehyde Manor in Allington, and later Middlewick House in Corsham, both in Wiltshire. She and her older brother Tom were raised as Roman Catholics. Their father is Catholic, as was their paternal grandmother, Ann.[3]

Lopes was educated at St Mary's Shaftesbury, a Catholic girls boarding school in Dorset.[4] In the 1980s, she and her brother attended Heywood Preparatory School in Corsham.[5] She later attended Oxford Brookes University, where she studied History of Art and Marketing.[6]

Career

In 2001, Lopes spent three months as an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice,[7] which she said years later that she still visited when in Venice.[8] She was Tatler's motoring correspondent in 2001 while her brother Tom was a food columnist at the same magazine.[9] Lopes managed The Space Gallery in London's Belgravia area in the mid-2000s,[4][10][11] and in October 2005 became a co-founding partner and gallery director of London's Eleven gallery.[8][12][13]

Marriage and children

On 6 May 2006, she married chartered accountant Harry Marcus George Lopes,[14] son of the Hon. George and Hon. Sarah Lopes.[15] Harry is a grandson of Massey Lopes, 2nd Baron Roborough and Helen Dawson, as well as of Gavin Astor and Irene Haig of the Astor family.[14] The wedding took place at St Cyriac's Church, an 11th-century Anglican church in Lacock, Wiltshire.[14] Lopes wore a wedding dress by Anna Valentine, the designer known for designing her mother's dress for her wedding to the Prince of Wales in 2005.[16][17][18] Between 400 and 500 guests attended the wedding, and more than 2000 well-wishers lined the streets after the ceremony.[19] The reception was held at Ray Mill, the nearby estate of the bride's mother.[20]

Lopes gave birth to a daughter, Eliza, on 16 January 2008.[21] On 30 December 2009 she gave birth to fraternal twin boys, Gus and Louis.[22] Eliza was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton on 29 April 2011.[23]

References