From Annabel’s to the Amazon: why Patricia Caring is giving back her millions

Patricia Caring pauses at the threshold of her reception room as though waiting for permission to enter. As co-chair of The Birley Clubs, the collection of members’ clubs owned by her husband Richard, she is a regular at functions and glittery galas. But discussing “important” things – family, her private life and work as a philanthropist – exposes a rare anxiety in her glamorous aura. She sinks into a tasselled sofa and downs a bottle of Acqua Panna water. “Have a sweet,” she says, pointing to a tray of cakes and Läderach chocolate. 

A glance around the room offers a brief education on the Carings’ respective histories. Richard, the billionaire businessman behind a hospitality empire that AA Gill once called the “restaurant equivalent of LVMH” – Sexy Fish, the Ivy Collection, Le Caprice – is felt in the grand columns and imposing fireplace. Patricia, 44, a Brazilian former property developer known by almost everyone as “Mrs C”, lives in the tropical motifs, velvet sofas and bespoke Pierre Frey carpets. The couple married in 2018, an event that garnered some tabloid scrutiny (Patricia is Richard’s second wife). Four children and six Yorkies later, they are a picture of South Kensington affluence.

The Caring Family Foundation, the couple’s “fifth child”, emerged quietly but convincingly in 2019. They had “given lots of donations before”, says Patricia, the face of the initiative. Launching a foundation was a chance to build on their offering and create “something personal”. Richard, 77, is involved, but unavailable for comment.

The Carings “cover all the running costs” of the Foundation. The rest is funded by private donations. Every September, Annabel’s, Richard’s £3,750-a-year members’ club, debuts a new rainforest-inspired façade to raise awareness and encourage donations. An exclusive fundraising gala follows, attended by a crowd of socialites, celebrities and businessmen, that brings in around £2mn. Last month’s gala, an event that raised £2.23mn, brought together more than 100 guests, among them artist Marc Quinn, actor Ed Speleers and singer Mabel. “You’re probably the only people in this country with any money left… Blessed are those who put their hands in their pockets,” said Richard. A silent auction hosted by Swiss auctioneer Simon de Pury followed, many of the lots donated by the Carings’ friends. One gentleman raised his paddle at £20,000 for a lunch at Annabel’s with Kate Moss, but stood down before it went for £110,000. (He did walk away with an Amazon-inspired painting by Daniel Arsham for £40,000.)

The Caring Family Foundation is a three-pronged initiative that started with child poverty, donating 1.14 million meals during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Soon after, Patricia expanded to working with victims of domestic abuse in Brazil and the UK: more than 30,000 women and children have been supported across both countries. The final effort, to which most funds are directed – £3.1mn to date – is the restoration of the Amazon rainforest. The three pillars are a reflection of Patricia’s “organic” approach to philanthropy. “I didn’t plan it – it just happened,” she says. The decision to support domestic abuse victims was the result of a call from a friend telling her about women trapped at home during lockdown. An initial care centre was set up in São Paulo, the first of many the Foundation supports in collaboration with organisations including Advance, Solace and Latin American Women’s Aid. The reforestation pillar was established after a similar conversation between Patricia and Katie Beeching, an ambassador for the Foundation, after images of the Amazon ablaze were circulated in 2019-20. 

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The Foundation’s work in the Amazon is as much about supporting the Indigenous communities who live there as reforestation – 2.3 million trees and counting. “We’re not just planting trees, we’re transforming lives,” says Patricia, who was raised by her grandparents in the south of the country. “We teach them how to plant so that they become farmers.” Adair Pereira Duarte is manager of the Forest Landscape Restoration Programme at SOS Amazônia, one of the Foundation’s partner NGOs. “The commercialisation of [fruit and vegetables grown by these communities] has become an important factor for women, who sell them at local markets,” he says.

Gaining the trust of these communities is a delicate operation that requires ongoing visits to the Amazon. They are relationships that have been built by “sitting cross-legged on the floor in jeans”, says Beeching, who joined the Foundation in 2020. Much of the work takes place in the western regions of Acre and Rondônia – and the journey there can be challenging. 

“Nothing prepares you for when you go to the Amazon,” says Patricia, who visits two or three times a year. “No videos. No documentaries, nothing. You see miles and miles and miles of destruction. It’s hell on earth. Then you see the people. We only think about the green; we forget about the Indigenous people who live in it. Their land is being destroyed. Their ancestors have been raped. They [live] below poverty. They have no chance in life.”

The cause has taken on greater urgency as the world prepares for next month’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30). Held for the first time in Brazil, there will be a renewed focus on the Amazon. “They are the guardians of the forest,” says Patricia of the communities who will be at the forefront of discussions. “In protecting them, we protect the forest.”

Patricia is a wealthy philanthropist, but says she’s no dilettante. “I’m very hands-on – I need to [learn to] take my foot off the accelerator,” she says. Her management skills can be traced back to her earlier career as a property developer. While flipping houses in her early 30s, she worked with “a team of 10 to 12 builders”. “I used to arrive, they’d all be smoking cigarettes and I’d say, ‘When [are] you going to finish this!’” 

“Honestly, I barely see her any more – she’s completely dedicated to her work,” says Anu Hinduja, co-founder of F1-inspired fashion label AN-Y1, who has known Patricia for more than 13 years. Adds criminal barrister Sultana Tafadar, founder of the non-profit Girls Human Rights Hub: “She is strategic. She has a vision that is equally matched by her generosity. She is driven and single-minded about achieving the goals that the Foundation has set out – there’s an element of relentlessness.” 

Running a foundation “is a lot of hard, hard, hard work”, says Patricia. It’s also something that’s scrutinised in the realm of the ultra-rich for not being enough of a gesture, or simply being done for tax relief. However, as Cath Dovey, a philanthropy partner of charity think tank NPC, points out: “You cannot make money by giving it away. Wealthy donors can claim back a portion of the tax, but the main benefit goes to the charities they support.” 

The Carings are also outliers in the world of philanthropy. Between 2007 and 2017, more than two-thirds of millionaire donations went to higher education, with half of that number going to Oxford and Cambridge. By directing a large proportion of their resources to those living below the poverty line, the Carings are bucking a trend that finds most ultra-high-net-worth givers giving to the arts and elite universities. For Daniel Jubb, co-founder of The Falcon Project, who gives to a “variety of charities, from cancer research to veterans”, The Caring Family Foundation is unique. “In a world where charities are becoming increasingly corporate, this passion is rare. It flows down through the organisation and inspires everybody that works with them.” 

The Caring Family Foundation remains comparatively small – 15 people are employed across the UK and Brazil – but its size makes it unusually agile. When Beeching learnt of an outbreak of disease in the Nukini community, who have very little contact with the outside world, the Foundation was able to send out medicines immediately. “Sometimes you have to act right now,” says Beeching. “You can’t dilly-dally.” In April, these efforts were bolstered by an aid bus launched in collaboration with Brazilian non-profit Associação Médicos da Floresta. The Foundation can now offer a range of medical services – the bus is fitted with ECG and dental X-ray machinery as well as ultrasound and ophthalmology equipment – in the remotest reaches of the Amazon. An estimated 38,000 people will be offered healthcare this year.

Sitting on the edge of her luxurious sofa, a Chagall behind her left shoulder and one of Damien Hirst’s Secret Garden paintings to her right, Patricia isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of forward-looking philanthropy. But her commitment to the cause is going full steam ahead: in the next five years, she wants to “double or triple or quadruple” the funds raised. 

The Foundation, she hopes, will become a “legacy” continued by her children. What are some of her proudest moments? “When I look into an Indigenous woman’s eyes and she’s pleased her son is not going to die because we saved his life. A woman who can find a job, leave her abuser and is not scared any more. A father who can look after his family and have an income. It’s addictive.”