Lilly Tartikoff

Lilly Tartikoff Karatz (née Samuels; born June 23, 1953, Los Angeles, California) is an American activist, socialite, restaurateur and breast cancer fundraiser.

The daughter of Jack and Bluma Samuels, both Holocaust survivors, she attended public schools while growing up in Los Angeles and at the age of 10 received a Ford Foundation scholarship to study ballet at the David Lichine and Irina Kosmovska Ballet School. From ages 10 to 17 she danced with the Los Angeles Junior Ballet. When she was 17 years old she was invited by George Balanchine to attend the School of American Ballet on a Ford Foundation Scholarship. During her nine years at the New York City Ballet, under the direction of Balanchine and Jerome Robbins, she danced in Russia, Germany, Denmark, London, Paris and Washington, D.C.

In 1982, Lilly Samuels married Brandon Tartikoff, Chairman of Entertainment for NBC. They had two daughters, Calla Lianne and Elizabeth Justine. In 1991, Calla, aged 8, suffered a severe brain injury in a car accident. She received intense therapy in order to walk and speak again, while Brandon received chemotherapy for the third time for Hodgkin's Disease. After a long illness, Brandon died on August 27, 1997, aged 48. In November 2009, she married Bruce Karatz, an American homebuilder and philanthropist.

In 1990, along with Ronald O. Perelman, Chairman and CEO of Revlon, she created the Revlon/UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program under the direction of Dr. Dennis Slamon. The annual Fire & Ice Ball in Hollywood was also established in 1990 to raise funds for this program. These funds were used to rapidly advance clinical trials which led to a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved drug, Herceptin, which increases responses and survival in women with the most aggressive form of breast cancer.

...
Wikipedia