Dale Egee, 83, of London, England, and Southbury, died on February 14 of heart failure. She was born in New York City to the late Corinne and Caldwell Richardson. Shortly afterward, the family moved to Newtown where they lived for 11 years.

They then moved to Weston, and she attended the Sacred Heart School in Greenwich. Upon graduation, she attended Rosemont College in Philadelphia. She studied art at the Istituto statale d'arte di Firenze in Florence, Italy, for two years.

Returning to the United States, she married Peter Hoe Lewis of New York City. They had three children, but soon after their third child was born Peter died suddenly of a heart attack. As a single mom, Mrs Egee started her own landscape and garden design business in Wilton.

In 1966, she joined Gladys and Benton Egee of Newtown, along with son David, to attend the destination wedding of a mutual friend. It was as if these two nursery school classmates met for the first time. By the end of that weekend they were in love and had married within the year. David received his master's degree from Columbia School of Public Health and moved the family to Flemington, N.J., where David worked as assistant hospital administrator of Hunterdon Medical Center. In 1968, the family moved to Beirut, Lebanon.

There, David worked as the administrator of the American University Hospital, Beirut, and Mrs Egee opened a weaving atelier. She produced modern tapestries of her own designs and was soon seeing her work installed in many collections and public spaces around the world. The atelier was small, however, so many of the tapestries were woven for her in Aubusson, France.

The Egees' time in Lebanon were truly their "Camelot Years." From their penthouse apartment in Beirut, she hosted lively parties for visiting government officials, writers, artists, foreign correspondents, and university professors and architects. Buckminster Fuller once used one of Mrs Egee's best linen napkins to draw a geodesic dome. An invitation to one of those parties was considered "the ticket." She was a striking figure, tall and beautiful with thick, natural silver-white hair that came to her by the time she was 30. Soon they purchased Chateau d'Olmet in the Languedoc region of France. From that perch, she entertained dozens and dozens of house guests during the summer months for 40 years.

In 1975, Beirut became dangerous and untenable. The couple moved to various places throughout the Europe and the Middle East, including Rome, Dubai, and Libya. Finally, David's work took him to London in 1980 and the couple settled in.

Mrs Egee promptly opened a new business, Egee Art Consultancy, and began her next career. This business took her once again to the Middle East where she collected regional art, local crafts, and antiques. She then installed these treasures in embassies, hotels, and government palaces throughout the region and North Africa.

Most remarkable is that Mrs Egee was one of the very first women to be permitted to travel unaccompanied (with no male escort in tow) on these missions throughout Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. This was nearly unheard of at the time, but she had official documents of permission.

After retirement, the pace of entertaining hardly let up. However, in 2010 Mrs Egee was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer disease. She still managed a very active social life up until this past September. Ultimately, she died peacefully while napping.

Her husband David, of London and Southbury; her sons, Adam Lewis of Stockholm, Sweden, and Tony Lewis of Burlington, Vt.; her daughters, Corinna Lewis of Ithaca, N.Y., and Eliza Dash of Lodeve, France; her brothers, John of Aspen, Colo., and Peter of Montreal, Canada; and three grandchildren survive her.

A Requiem Mass will be conducted on Monday, March 6, at The Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer & St Thomas More, Chelsea, London.

Contributions may be made to the Alzheimer's Foundation of America at alzfdn.org.