Inger Rice, whose vision and support helped establish the VCU Rice Rivers Center, dies at 96

By Sian Wilkerson

Philanthropist Inger Rice, whose generosity left a lasting mark on Virginia Commonwealth University and the Richmond community, died May 10 at age 96 in her home at Westminster Canterbury Richmond.

Among Rice’s major contributions to the university was the gift of 342 acres of land along the James River, midway between Richmond and Williamsburg. Donated in 2000, the site in Charles City County is now home to the VCU Rice Rivers Center, an environmental field station that supports scholarship and student instruction across disciplines including water resources, climate science, wildlife conservation and wetlands restoration.

“It gives me great pleasure to make this gift to VCU, an institution with an excellent reputation for teaching, research and service,” Rice told VCU News at the time. “My hope is that this contribution helps further the study of the life sciences, improving the quality of life for Virginians.”

VCU President Michael Rao, Ph.D., said Rice was a dear friend and noted the warmth that she extended his entire family when they came to the university 17 years ago.

“Inger had a brilliant vision, and we were fortunate that she brought so much of that brilliance to VCU and Richmond,” Rao said. “Inger's legacy, and the immeasurable impacts she made on our environment and VCU, will never be forgotten. We are stronger today because of her wisdom, philanthropy and vision.”

He added that though Rice will be missed, “we are comforted by our wonderful memories of being together for so many years in our friendship.”

Billing itself at VCU’s river campus, the Rice Rivers Center is part of the School of Life Sciences and Sustainability within the College of Humanities and Sciences. In an email to the center community, Executive Director Chris Gough, Ph.D., highlighted Rice’s commitment to conservation and to students.

“She believed the natural world deserved to be cared for, studied and cherished, and she saw the forests, rivers and wetlands of the Rice Rivers Center as something more than a research site but as a place of healing and reflection,” he wrote. “She was especially eager to hear how the center was engaging students, understanding instinctively that no modern technology can replicate the wonder and complexity of a living laboratory.”

The center’s former director, Greg Garman, Ph.D., spoke often with Rice – on the phone and in person – to share regular updates on the center’s growth and progress. The meetings included regular luncheon invitations extended by Rice to the center’s team.

“Personal generosity is the first thing that stands out to me about Ms. Rice,” Garman said. “The Rice Rivers Center, and particularly its people, was very important to her, and her generosity only compounded over the years.”

Those gifts, cumulatively valued at more than $6 million, included establishing a lead trust to support center operations and the construction of facilities such as the Walter L. Rice Education Building, named for her late husband, and the Inger Rice Lodge.

Throughout her life, Rice poured herself into volunteer work. She served in a number of roles, including national director of the Cultural Laureate Foundation, NGO representative to the United Nations and both the Virginia state director and international director of Friendship Force International, which named her Volunteer of the Year in 1984.

Rice also founded “Meet the People” in Jamaica in 1968, helped organize the International Year of the Child in 1979 and established the Inger Rice Foundation in Australia, where Walter Rice served as U.S. ambassador during President Richard Nixon’s first term.

Rice loved to travel, a passion she and her husband shared. In a 2013 interview with Style Weekly, she described the “immediate electricity” of her first meeting with the Richmond-based executive in 1960.

“We talked and talked and talked,” Rice told the magazine. “We talked about life. I had been all over the world. He had been all over the world.” Soon after, they were married, their union spanning 38 years until his death in 1998.

Prior to immigrating to the United States in 1955, Rice, who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, received a bachelor’s degree in modern languages from Copenhagen University, having studied English in London and French in Paris.