Teresa Heinz (Maria Teresa Simões-Ferreira)

Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões-Ferreira Heinz (born October 5, 1938), known as Teresa Heinz, is an American businesswoman and philanthropist, the widow of former U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III (R-Pennsylvania), and the wife of U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts).

Maria Teresa Thierstein Simões Ferreira was born to Portuguese parents in Mozambique, at the time a colony of the Portuguese Empire.

Her father was José Simões Ferreira Júnior (1910–1989; born in Albergaria-a-Velha, and died in Porto, Portugal), and her mother was Irene Thierstein (1912–1997), born a Portuguese and British national in Lourenço Marques.

Irene was of Swiss-German, Italian, and French descent. She was the daughter of Alberto Thierstein, a British national from Valletta, Malta (at the time a British-ruled territory), and Maria Burló, born in Alexandria, Egypt, who both migrated to Portuguese East Africa.

Heinz grew up in Portuguese East Africa's capital, Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). Her father was a physician.

In 1960, Heinz earned a Bachelor of Arts in Romance Languages and Literature from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1963, she graduated from the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Geneva.

Marriages and children

On February 5, 1966, at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's gothic Heinz Chapel on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh, Simões-Ferreira married Henry John Heinz III, an heir to the H. J. Heinz Company. In 1971, she became a naturalized citizen. The couple had three sons: H. John IV (born November 4, 1966), Andre (born December 12, 1969), and Christopher (born March 20, 1973).