[2] In 1917, she married Henry J. Schlesinger, a man 18 years her senior who owned Fairland Farm in Lexington, where her father was a professional trainer, and moved to Milwaukee, where he had an iron and coke business.

At the time, Laura had been previously engaged to Harrison Williams, reputed to be the richest man in America, with an estimated fortune of $600 million ($10,300,000,000 in today dollars; $37,500,000,000 in gold-dollars (at $1275/tr.oz)), made in financing public utilities.

They kept a home on North Ocean Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida, and the villa Il Fortino overlooking Capri's Marina Grande, on land which belonged first to Caesar Augustus, and later to the Emperor Tiberius.

When Cristóbal Balenciaga closed his atelier in 1968, Diana Vreeland quipped that von Bismarck did not leave her bedroom in the villa at Capri for three days.

She donated her papers and photos to the Filson Historical Society in 1976, and several items of unique jewelry to the Smithsonian Institution, including the Bismarck Sapphire Necklace.

They include Duchess of Windsor, Diana Vreeland, Gore Vidal, Randolph Churchill, Constantin Alajalov (cover illustrator for The New Yorker and the Saturday Evening Post), jewelry designer Jean Schlumberger, Hubert de Givenchy, and Cecil Beaton.

Toward the end of her life, and with her eyesight beginning to fail, she spent her final years with dispatching her papers, paintings and items from her collections to various museums and cultural societies.

She was buried in a Givenchy gown and rests with her third and fourth husbands, Harrison Williams and Eddie Von Bismarck, in Locust Valley Cemetery, on Long Island.