Queen Noor was born Lisa Najeeb Halaby in
Washington, D.C., U.S., the eldest child of
Najeeb Halaby (1915–2003) and Doris Carlquist (1918–2015). Her paternal family is
Syrian; her maternal family is
Swedish American. Her father was raised a
Christian Scientist and was a Navy experimental test pilot, an airline executive, and government official. He served as an aide to the
United States Secretary of Defense in the
Truman administration, before being appointed by President
John F. Kennedy to head the
Federal Aviation Administration. Najeeb Halaby also had a private-sector career, serving as CEO of
Pan American World Airways from 1969 to 1972. The Halabys had two children following Lisa; a son, Christian, and a younger daughter, Alexa. The children were raised nominally
Episcopalian. Najeeb and Doris divorced in 1977. Doris, who was of
Swedish descent, died on December 25, 2015, aged 97. Noor's paternal grandfather was Najeeb Elias Halaby, a Syrian-Lebanese businessman born in
Zahle, and whose parents hailed from
Aleppo. He was a
petroleum broker, according to 1920 Census records. Merchant
Stanley Marcus recalled that in the mid-1920s, Halaby opened Halaby Galleries, a rug boutique and interior-decorating shop, at
Neiman Marcus in
Dallas,
Texas, and ran it with his Texas-born wife, Laura Wilkins (1889–1987, later Mrs. Urban B. Koen). Najeeb Halaby died shortly afterward, and his estate was unable to continue the new enterprise. According to research done in 2010 for the PBS series
Faces of America by Professor
Henry Louis Gates Jr., of Harvard University, her great-grandfather, Elias Halaby, came to New York circa 1891, one of the earliest Syrian-Lebanese immigrants to the United States. He was a Christian as well as having been a provincial treasurer (magistrate) as stated before by Najeeb Halaby in his autobiography ''Crosswinds: an Airman's Memoir''. == Education ==