Austrian princess Maria Galitzine, who spent her school years in Russia, has died of a sudden heart aneurysm in the United States at age 31, her family said in an obituary published Friday.
Maria Singh, née Princess Maria Galitzine, was the great-granddaughter of the last emperor and empress of Austria and a descendant of the House of Habsburg that ruled parts of Europe for almost 600 years.
Her Russian roots go back to Countess Xenia Czernichev-Besobrasov, who became the second Russian Orthodox archduchess of Austria after marrying the last emperor’s youngest son, Archduke Rudolf, in 1953.
At age 5 in 1993, Princess Maria and her family moved from her birth country of Luxembourg to Russia, where she attended a private German school in Moscow.
She attended the College of Art and Design in Belgium after graduating and lived in Brussels, Chicago and Houston, where she married chef Rishi Roop Singh.
Princess Maria passed away on May 4, her obituary in The Houston Chronicle said. She was laid to rest in the Orthodox section of a Houston cemetery on May 8. She would have turned 32 on May 11.
She is survived by her husband, their two-year-old son, parents Princess Maria-Anna and Prince Piotr Galitzine, as well as three sisters and two brothers.
