Basma bint Saud

Basmah bint Saud Al Saud بسمة بنت سعود بن عبد العزيز آل سعود
Basmah bint Saud at Chatham House in 2013
Born	(1964-03-01) 1 March 1964 (age 53) Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Issue	Saud Sara Samahir Soohod Ahmad
Full name Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud
House	House of Saud
Father	King Saud
Religion	Islam

HRH Princess Basmah bint Saud bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (1 March 1964 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.) is a Saudi businesswoman and a member of House of Saud. Since 2010, she has lived in Acton, London, In 1976, due to the outbreak of civil war in Lebanon, HRH moved between London and America with her mother.

Her Royal Highness is the youngest daughter of King Saud and her mother, Princess Jamila bint Asad Ibrahim Marei, is from Latakia. Princess Jamila came to the Kingdom at the start of the twentieth century and learnt the Quran and studied under the late King Abdulaziz. She then married King Saud as his seventh wife, becoming mother to Prince Khaled, Princess Jawahir, Prince Abdel Majid, Princess Fahda, Princess Sheikha and Prince Abdel Malik.

Princess Basmah spent the first twenty years of her life studying and travelling the world, contributing towards her success as a talented, strategic and analytical leader. By virtue of those years of diverse Arab identity, HRH succeeded in refining her character, bearing a unique strategy of character building and concern for the individual.

Basmah bint Saud was born on 1 March 1964. She is the 115th and youngest of King Saud's children. Her mother was a Syrian-born woman, Jamila Merhi, who was chosen for her future husband when she visited Mecca on the haj (pilgrimage).

Basmah was born during the last days of her father's reign. She saw him only twice when she was five. Her mother took her to the Middle East's then-most cosmopolitan city, the Lebanese capital of Beirut. When Lebanon's civil war broke out in 1975, the family fled for Britain.

In Beirut, Basmah bint Saud attended a French school. In Britain, she attended a Hertfordshire girls' school and a College in London, before spending two years studying in Switzerland. Basma studied medicine, psychology and English literature at Beirut Arab University. In 1979, she graduated from high school at the Leaders College in America. Her Royal Highness then travelled between several European capital cities and the US, where she studied at various universities, before moving with her mother to Syria in 1983. These universities included Richmond in the UK the American University in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she studied the social sciences.