The DC that philanthropist and society queen inhabits is one where glamour and whimsy reign—and where a dinner party can perhaps still bridge political divides.
The Folly mansion was once hidden behind weeping cherry trees and towering oaks, tucked behind Chevy Chase Circle as if it were a forgotten chapter of old Washington, DC, where faded grandeur, whimsical architecture, and wrought iron gates whispered the weight of long-held secrets. But its current owner, Adrienne Arsht, who greets me in a crisp blouse, tailored trousers, a tie clasped with medals from the king of Spain and the presidents of Ecuador, Brazil, and Colombia, black-rimmed glasses, and four-inch stilettos, is exactly the opposite. She wears oversize David Webb rings—one a leopard, the other a panda, part of the jeweler’s iconic collection and symbolic of her unique role as cultural diplomat. After all, it was Arsht who helped facilitate a $50 million conservation deal between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Smithsonian’s National Zoo. She served as the unofficial liaison, negotiating the delicate diplomacy required for the U.S. to accept Saudi funding. The project aims to protect and expand the critically endangered Arabian leopards, of which fewer than 200 remain. For Arsht such things are all in a day’s work.
She closes the door behind me, and just outside, on the stone ledge of the porte cochere, a bronze leopard with two baby cubs—which she bought at auction—looks ready to pounce. “If I’m going to do something, I go at it full tilt,” she says.
This is Adrienne Arsht—a woman Harry Connick Jr. once dubbed a “badass” after he was introduced to her at his show at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. She rescued the center, and it quickly became one of the city’s major cultural hubs. Arsht subsequently self-published a book of aphorisms with the title Bon Mots of a Badass, which features quotes such as Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself.”
The mansion itself is an extension of her personality: exuberant, fearless, and fun in the best way. Gone are the heavy drapes and dimly lit parlors from Washington’s past. In their place: a luminous glass-enclosed sitting room dubbed “the Aviary.” Playful yet discreetly modern art and furniture are everywhere. A Campana Brothers chair made entirely of stuffed pandas sits near one of the many fireplaces, and a signed original print of Ormond Gigli’s famous photo Girls in the Windows hangs above another. “I thought about cutting out each of their heads and replacing them with my face,” she says with a laugh. Her energy is dazzling, her humor provocative.
There is also a fully outfitted modern kitchen and a soft-serve ice cream parlor tucked in the back, a nod to her time spent in Miami and inspired by Whip n’ Dip, a neighborhood favorite. Arsht had the parlor custom-built for the Folly, with a machine that uses a special mix that turns into Italian ice when water is added. Her guests can pull their own desserts. “We parsed the calorie count carefully,” she says. At dinner parties, after the chef serves fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, guests make their own bowls of ice cream. You never know who is coming for dinner: Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, Andrea Mitchell from MSNBC, or the former U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, to name a few people she has hosted. It’s no wonder this is where diplomacy happens. “You can do a pull-aside at the soft-serve machine,” she tells me.
The Folly also features a built-in pipe organ in what she calls “the great room,” beneath vaulted ceilings reminiscent of British aristocracy; it’s ideal for the kind of off-the-record concerts, cocktail soirees, and power dinners that Arsht is known for. But her favorite past event, she tells me, was when she held a gospel Sunday with a performance by the United States Navy Band. For the final hymn, Francis Collins—the former head of the NIH and a musician himself—stood up and began to sing. “Everyone followed,” she says. “It was a moment. People from all over the world, of every color and faith.”
If you want to really understand Adrienne Arsht, you have to start with her roots. Particularly her mother, Roxana Cannon Arsht, who was the fifth woman to pass the Delaware bar and the state’s first female judge. “If Don Quixote and Joan of Arc had a baby, it would be my mother,” Arsht says. “She would die for a cause.”
Arsht was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware, in a home where service wasn’t something talked about or even taught; it was just something you did. It was the way her parents showed up in their everyday lives. Her father Samuel Arsht was a prominent attorney. “Truth, justice, honor—do the right thing,” she says of the values her parents modeled.
Arsht was a pioneer herself—the 11th woman to pass the Delaware bar and the first female attorney hired by Trans World Airlines, which brought her to New York City. She recalls a department meeting held at the Union League Club. At the time, only men were allowed. Arsht was turned away at the door, but she risked getting fired if she didn’t attend. “I had to sneak in through the kitchen,” she says. Shortly afterward, her boss made a pass at her on a work trip, and when she said no he tried to fire her. But Arsht had been strategic in creating the right relationships with men in the C-suite; they defended her, and she was able to return after being put on leave. “They didn’t even have a rule of law to define what happened to me in those days,” she says. It was her ability to build alliances at the highest levels that safeguarded her career, not the legal system.