by 
Britain’s most coveted bachelor is officially off the market after the Duke of Westminster announced his engagement.
Hugh Grosvenor, 32, proposed to Olivia Henson, 30, at her family home in Cheshire this weekend.
The Duke is one of Britain’s youngest billionaires, with an estimated net worth of nearly £10 billion. At the heart of his inherited fortune is a portfolio of properties comprising 300 acres in two of London’s most expensive boroughs, Mayfair and Belgravia.
Known as ‘Hughie’, the Duke is a close friend of the Prince and Princess of Wales and godfather to Prince George.
He met Miss Henson, an account manager at a food company, through friends. They have been together for two years.
“The Duke of Westminster and Miss Olivia Henson are delighted to announce that they are engaged to be married,” a spokesman for the Grosvenor family said in a statement Sunday.
“Members of both their families are absolutely delighted with the news.”
Cheshire proposal
The proposal took place at Eaton Hall in Cheshire, an 11,000-acre estate which has been the home of the Grosvenor family since the 15th century.
Miss Henson works for Belazu, a London firm specializing in products from around the Mediterranean, such as Spanish olive oil stocked at Waitrose.
His early school years were spent at the Dragon School, a preparatory school in Oxford. She was later educated at Marlborough College, a £43,000 a year co-educational boarding school in Wiltshire, where Princess Eugenie was a contemporary.
The school’s alumni also include the Princess of Wales, who attended Marlborough College before meeting Prince William at St Andrew’s University.
Miss Henson studied Hispanic Studies and Italian at Trinity College Dublin where she earned a 2:1 BA.
After graduating in 2016, he worked as a business development manager for Daily Dose, a cold-pressed juice start-up.
He then worked briefly for No 1 Rosemary Water Still, a supplier of bottled water with fresh rosemary extract sold in supermarkets. Miss Henson joined Belazu as an account manager in 2019 and has been a senior account manager for the past year.
Inherited family fortune
The duke inherited his family’s fortune when his father, Gerald Grosvenor, died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 64 in 2016.
His parents are said to have tried to endow him with as normal a childhood as possible.
She was educated at a state primary school in The Wirral, close to their family home, before attending a private school, Mostyn House.
He later attended the co-educational Ellesmere College, a private school in Shropshire whose alumni include rugby player Bill Beaumont and Michael Chapman, former Archdeacon of Northampton.
The Duke, whose former title was Earl Grosvenor, went on to study countryside management at Newcastle University.
After graduating, he worked in property management for Grosvenor Group, before becoming an account manager at Bio-Bean, a green energy company.
Donated to Covid Relief
After his father’s death, Duke became president of Grosvenor and assumed leadership of the charitable interests of the Duke and Grosvenor businesses.
During the pandemic, he has donated £12.5m of his personal fortune to the national Covid-19 relief effort.
The Duke’s inherited fortune ranks him as the 159th richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index.
In addition to estates and landholdings in London, the duke inherited huge tracts of land in the British Isles, including Oxford, Cheshire and Scotland.
The firm develops, manages and invests in real estate in cities around the world, from Vancouver to Tokyo. It also invests in food and agricultural companies, including dairy companies, groves and producers of meat alternatives.
The Duke represents Team GB at Olympic clay pigeon shooting competitions overseas and in the UK.
He was previously in a relationship with Harriet Tomlinson, whom he met when they were both students at Ellesmere College.
Romantic vacation in 2017
Photographs surfaced of the couple enjoying a romantic break in 2017, and a source told The Mirror that Miss Tomlinson, a consultant at recruitment firm Deverell Smith, was “a really lovely girl and the love of his life.” However, the couple later split.
Despite having two older sisters, the Duke inherited the family fortune as a boy. His sisters benefit from sizable trust funds.
It is understood that no immediate plans have been made for the Duke’s marriage to Miss Henson.
His older sister, Lady Tamara, 43, married Edward van Cutsem, a friend of Prince William, at Chester Cathedral in 2004, in a grand ceremony attended by 650 guests, including the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip.
However, Lady Edwina, her other elder sister, 41, opted for a small ceremony attended only by close family and close friends when she married TV presenter Dan Snow at Liverpool’s Bishop’s Lodge in 2010.
Lady Viola, 30, younger sister of the Duke, also married in a secret family ceremony last year. Her husband is Angus Roberts, an officer of the Dragoon Guards, and their wedding was celebrated with a party in Kenya.
