Born on February 18, 1940, Dame Prudence Margaret Leith, DBE, is a South African restaurateur.
She is also a famous chef, caterer, television presenter/broadcaster, journalist, cookbook author, and novelist.
Alongside her work with cooking and television, Leith is also the Chancellor of Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University.
Before joining The Great British Bake Off in March 2017 to replace Mary Berry when the television show relocated to Channel 4, she served as a judge on BBC Two’s Great British Menu for eleven years.
Most people know Leith for these two television roles, but she is perhaps best known for her staggering wealth.
Leith is not only a famous chef but she is one of the most successful ones in all of South Africa.
People all over the world are surprised and in awe of her wealth, which will be discussed in this article.
Quick Facts About Prue Leith
| 82 |
| $85 Million |
| Celebrity Chef |
| South African |
| Rayne Kruger (m. 1974; died 2002), John Playfair (m. 2016) |
| 2 |
| February 18, 1940 |
| Cape Town, Cape Province, Union of South Africa |
| St Mary’s School, Waverley, University of Cape Town |
| 1960 – Present |
Learn About Prue Leith’s Net Worth In 2022
South African restauranteur Prue Leith has a personal net worth of over 85 million pounds as of 2022.
Leith started her career after moving to London in 1960 to study at the Cordon Bleu Cookery School.
After graduating from the school she started Leith’s Good Food, which she started a business supplying high-quality business lunches.
However, later in her career, Leith’s Good Food evolved into a party and event caterer.
She then opened Leith’s, her Michelin-starred restaurant in Notting Hill, in 1969 but has since sold it in 1995.
The restauranteur also founded Leith’s School of Food and Wine in 1975, where she trains both professional chefs and home cooks.
In 1993, the group had a turnover of £15 million, which she then sold, and in 1995, she assisted in the establishment of the Prue Leith College (later renamed the Prue Leith Chef’s Academy) in South Africa.
When she became the first woman to be appointed to the British Railways Board in 1977, she immediately set about improving its much-criticized food.
In 1982, the hospitality industry’s catering segment, Travellers Fare, was split off, and restaurants like Casey Jones and Upper Crust were established.
While running her business, Leith started writing a culinary column for the Daily Mail, Sunday Express, The Guardian, and the Daily Mirror.
She has written seven novels in addition to 12 cookbooks, including Leith’s Cookery Bible.
Her novels are:
- Leaving Patrick,
- Sisters,
- A Lovesome Thing,
- Choral Society,
- A Serving of Scandal,
- The Food of Love: Laura’s Story, and
- The Prodigal Daughter.
The last two are a part of the trilogy called Food of Love.
Relish, her autobiography, was released in 2013.
She made her debut on television in the 1970s as a presenter for two 13-episode magazine series produced by Tyne Tees Television and targeted at stay-at-home mothers.
She was brought in as Jack de Manio’s last-minute replacement.
However, with no prior experience and a director who preferred everything to be scripted, even interviews, Leith found the whole situation unpleasant.
Later, in the 1980s, she was the focus of two television programs about her life and career: the pilot of Channel 4’s Take Six Cooks and the BBC’s The Best of British, a program about aspiring businesspeople.
She served as one of the commissioners on the Channel 4 Poverty Commission in 1999.
Leith then returned to television as a judge for My Kitchen Rules after leaving it to succeed Mary Berry in The Great British Bake Off, where she served for 11 years until 2016.
Her involvement with food in education is extensive.
She established and oversaw the charity Focus on Food, which is now a division of the Soil Association while serving as chair of the Royal Society of Arts.
Focus on Food encourages cookery in the curriculum.
She also founded the Hoxton Apprentice, a non-profit restaurant that trained the most disadvantaged young people who had been long-term unemployed for 10 years, in partnership with the nonprofit Training for Life.
She was a part of the Esmée Fairbairne grant-making foundation’s Food Strand up until 2015.
She served as the Chair of the School Food Trust from 2007 to 2010, the government-backed organization principally in charge of improving school food in the wake of Jamie Oliver’s televised exposé on the subpar quality of school dinners.
Leith is a patron of Let’s Get Cooking, an organization with over 5,000 cooking clubs in public schools founded and administered by The Trust (formerly the Children’s Food Trust).
She is a trustee for Baby Taste Journey. This charity promotes healthy eating for young children, is vice president of The Sustainable Restaurant Association, patron of The Institute for Food, Brain, and Behavior, and the Prue Leith Chef’s Academy in her native South Africa.
She has also been involved in general education, serving as head of the Ashridge Management College, Chairman of Governors at Kings College in Guildford, a secondary school, and 3E’s Enterprises, a corporation that turns around failing schools and manages academies.
In essence, Leith has had a long and storied career that has stood the test of time and made her an icon not only in her home country of South Africa but also in the United Kingdom.
Leith is looked up to as an icon in both the cooking world and beyond for being one of the most honored and celebrated chefs of her generation.
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Who Is Prue Leith’s Husband?
Leith Prue was married to Rayne Kruger, a property developer and author, with whom he’d had a 13-year affair while he was married to someone else.
Charles Rayne Kruger was a property developer and author from South Africa.
The son of an unmarried, 17-year-old British Army officer’s daughter, Charles Rayne Kruger was born on January 29, 1922, in Queenstown, Eastern Cape.
His mother wed Johannesburg real estate agent Victor Kruger after his father vanished.
He received his education at the University of the Witwatersrand and Jeppe High School.
The actress Nan Munro, who was 16 years his senior and had three children, was Kruger’s first wife.
They separated later, and Kruger promptly married Leith Prue, with whom he had a son, the Conservative MP Danny Kruger, and an adopted daughter, Li-Da, who is Cambodian.
Kruger published nine books in total:
- Tanker, a novel, published in 1952
- The Spectacle, a crime story, published in 1953
- Young Villain With Wings, a crime story, published in 1953
- My Name Is Celia, a novel, published in 1954
- The Even Keel, a crime story, published in 1955
- Ferguson, a crime story, published in 1956
- Goodbye Dolly Gray: The Story of the Boer War, a Non-Fiction, published in 1959
- The Devil’s Discus, a Non-Fiction, published in 1964, and
- All Under Heaven: A Complete History of China, a Non-Fiction, published in 2003
Kruger passed away on December 2002, aged 80. Leith has since remarried John Playfair, a retired clothes designer, they wed on October 2016.
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Who Are Prue Leith’s Children?
As stated above, Prue Leith has two children, the Conservative MP Danny Kruger, and an adopted daughter, Li-Da, who is Cambodian.
Currently serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Devizes, Wiltshire, is politician Daniel Rayne Kruger MBE of the British Conservative Party.
Kruger attended Eton College for his education before going on to study history at the Universities of Edinburgh and Oxford.
After finishing college, he worked at the Centre for Policy Studies think tank before joining the Conservative Party as a policy adviser.
In 2006, Kruger took over as David Cameron’s primary speechwriter.
Two years later, he resigned from this position to take a full-time position with Only Connect, a youth crime prevention organization that he had co-founded.
Kruger received an MBE in 2017 for his philanthropic services.
Between August and December 2019, he served as political secretary to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Emma, a former teacher, is married to Kruger. They both helped start the nonprofit organization Only Connect.
He is an ardent follower of Christ and an evangelical Christian.
He received a punishment after his puppy started a stampede in Richmond Park in London by chasing a herd of 200 deer.
Kruger apologized and promised to be more cautious going forward.
Most recently, he made the biggest energy bill claim of any Westminster MP in 2020–2021.
Leith’s other child, her daughter, is a filmmaker.
Leith also has a brother, James Leith, an ex-restauranteur, who is married to biographer Penny Juror.
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Some FAQs
How much is Prue Leith’s Net Worth?
She is worth 85 million pounds
How many times has Prue Leith been married?
She has been married twice
How many children does Prue Leith have?
She has two children, one of them being adopted
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