A descendant of Charles II"s mistress Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, and George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon, who served as Queen Victoria"s three-time Foreign Secretary, she was born in London. Her father was Sir Charles Villiers, a merchant banker who was the chairman of British Steel from 1974 until 1988. Her mother was Sir Charles"s second wife, the former Countess Marie Josée de la Barre d’Erquelinnes.
She is the wife of John Negroponte, the former United States Deputy Secretary of State and former United States. Director of National Intelligence. "I was terrified -- and bored. Terrified that he might ask me something I didn"t know the answer to, and bored because I was just a 21-year-old." She recalled, "The next day he"s on the same Pan Am flight I am, going to Paris.
When I got out 19 hours later in Paris, I was heads over heels in love with this guy."
As Diana Negroponte recalled in an interview with The Washington Post, "I met his mother at a wedding in London.
Diana Villiers Negroponte has a doctorate in government from Georgetown University and a Juris Doctor from American University"s Washington College of Law. She also studied at the London School of Economics.
She served a term as an associate at Georgetown University"s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy and a teaching position at Fordham University in The Bronx. She appeared on a Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network Washington Journal to discuss United States-Argentina relations in March 2008, and also on the Public Broadcasting Service Newshour.
Quotations: "explained the constitutional assembly throughout the whole meal!".
She is a member of the board of Freedom House, the Leadership Council of Habitat for Humanity"s New York City chapter, the board of the Women"s Foreign Policy Group, the advisory board of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholar"s Mexico Institute, and the board of directors of Opportunity International.
