In her youth the Duchess posed for Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton and she appeared on the cover of Time and Harper's Bazaar.

Six children were born of this marriage: Widowed in 1972, the Duchess remarried first on 16 March 1978 Jesús Aguirre y Ortiz de Zárate (1934–2001), a Doctor of Theology and a former Jesuit priest.

The re-widowed Duchess expressed her wish to marry Alfonso Díez Carabantes in the 2000s, a civil servant who separately had a public relations business, 24 years her junior.

[4][6] The duchess decided to proceed and gave her children their inheritance which included majestic palaces in Spain, paintings by old and modern masters (from Fra Angelico, Titian and Goya to Renoir and Marc Chagall), a first-edition copy of Cervantes's Don Quixote, letters written by Christopher Columbus, and substantial land; her wealth was estimated at between €600 million and €3.5 billion.

[4] They married on 5 October 2011 at the Palacio de las Dueñas in Seville,[8] where the Duchess, whose passions included flamenco, performed a short dance for the spectators.

Juan José Asenjo and Curro Romero, and Mariano Rajoy, Spain's prime minister, also formally paid their respects.

[11] Her funeral was held at Seville Cathedral by Carlos Amigo Vallejo, where the Royal Family was represented by the Infanta Elena.