Widener re-married Harvard professor Alexander Hamilton Rice Jr.. She funded his research and accompanied him on a number of expeditions in South America, Europe and India.

[5] The trip to England was to ensure the safe arrival of 30 silver plates once owned by Nell Gwyn being donated to the London Museum.

They subsequently traveled to Paris to purchase a wedding dress for the upcoming marriage of their daughter Eleanor[6] and to search for a chef for their new hotel, the Ritz Carlton in Philadelphia.

[1] George, Harry, and their valet died in the sinking, but Eleanor and her maid[9] survived in lifeboat #4[10] along with first-class female passengers Madeleine Astor, Emily Ryerson,[11] and Marian Thayer.

[7] She returned to Philadelphia to recover and renovated St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, as a memorial to her husband.

[12] At the library's June 1915 dedication, Widener met[16] Harvard professor Alexander Hamilton Rice Jr., a surgeon, South American explorer, and Boston Brahmin.

They returned several times in search of the source of the Orinoco River to dispel a myth that a tribe of White Indians ruled the area.

[12] She left her fortune of $11 million,[25] with minor exceptions, to a trust for the benefit of Rice, to pass on his death to her surviving son George and daughter Eleanor.

[26] She gifted the furniture and contents of her Louis XVI drawing room from her New York City home on Fifth Avenue to the Pennsylvania Museum of Art.