Early life Laura Parker Bowles was born on 19 April 1978, the second child of army officer
Andrew Parker Bowles and
Camilla Shand. She grew up at
Bolehyde Manor in
Allington, and later
Middlewick House in
Corsham, both in Wiltshire. She and her older brother
Tom were raised as
Catholics. Their father is Catholic, as was their paternal grandmother,
Dame Ann Parker Bowles.
Fiona Petty-Fitzmaurice, Marchioness of Lansdowne, is her godmother. Lopes was educated at
St Mary's Shaftesbury, a Catholic girls boarding school in
Dorset. She later attended
Oxford Brookes University, where she studied History of Art and Marketing.
Career In 2001, Lopes spent three months as an intern at the
Peggy Guggenheim Collection in
Venice. She was
Tatlers motoring correspondent in 2001 while her brother Tom was a food columnist at the same magazine. Lopes managed The Space Gallery in London's
Belgravia area in the mid-2000s, and in October 2005 became a co-founding partner and
gallery director of London's Eleven gallery. She also recommends art events to her mother. From 2015 to 2023, she was the co-founding owner of the fashion boutique Mojo & McCoy in
Hungerford.
Marriage and children Since her mother's wedding to Charles III (then Prince Charles) in 2005, she has been Charles' stepdaughter and the stepsister of
Prince William and
Prince Harry. On 6 May 2006, she married
chartered accountant Harry Marcus George Lopes, son of the Hon. George Lopes and his wife, the Hon. Sarah Astor. Harry's paternal grandparents are
Massey Lopes, 2nd Baron Roborough and Helen Dawson, while his maternal grandparents are
Gavin Astor, 2nd Baron Astor of Hever and
Lady Irene Haig. 380 guests attended the wedding, and around 500 well-wishers lined the streets after the ceremony. Lopes gave birth to a daughter in 2008, and to fraternal twin sons in 2009. Her daughter Eliza was a bridesmaid at the
wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton on 29 April 2011. Her sons Gus and Louis were
Pages of Honour to their grandmother at
her coronation. ==References==