Oprah, Pharrell, Hollywood Luminaries Remember Jacoline Avant: A Light Has Gone Out in Los Angeles

Friends of Jacqueline Avant, the wife of music mogul Clarence Avant, are reeling from her shocking death at the age of 81 after a shooting and dwelling attack. As they process the tragedy, they are plus shiny a open on the subject of her charitable take steps and legacy of amiability.

Grace is one of those things you cant forecast. It doesn’t just arrive, it shows taking place and blesses you, Oprah Winfrey, a friend of Avant, told Variety during an emotional conversation this weekend. That is how you always felt if you were in Jacquie Avant’s presence. She showed happening and you were blessed.

More from Variety

Suspect in Jacqueline Avant Shooting Charged With Murder

Suspect Arrested in Jacqueline Avant Killing

Tyler Perry Promises ‘Every Available Resource Will Be Used’ to Find Jacqueline Avant’s Killer

As fashion collaborator in crime to Clarence, a former Motown Records chairman who has been dubbed The Black Godfather, she was known affectionately to take steps impinge on luminaries, numerous charitable foundations and connections as Jacquie.

Her loss is yet hard to entertain for many in her inner circle and the community at large.

I don’t pronounce this lightly, but a light has amid out in Los Angeles, said Fred Rosen, the former Ticketmaster CEO and pal of the adroitness couple. He became acquainted upfront than Avant through her daughter Nicole, a former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas and the wife of Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandon.

The soft-spoken Avant transcended labels usually reserved for women of means in the sprawling hills of L.A. She was not a socialite, but used her gift and profusion to become a major force for self-sacrifice, giving to causes involving arts, women’s rights, and education.

Her approach was just to manage to pay for what she had. I definitely felt that later myself, and in all the take steps that she did in her charitable giving. Its what she knew, what she had been exposed to and aspired to. That’s what she was friendly to allocate to supplementary people, Winfrey recalled through tears.

Avant was born in Jamaica, Queens, N.Y. In her help on years, she studied to be a phlebotomist and supported herself modeling by now she met Clarence, whose talents brought them to Beverly Hills in 1967. As one of the first Black families in the prestigious zip code, the Avant’s arrived at a defining moment in the city’s records, numerous relatives connections told Variety. Here she would spend later again five decades writing a moral and empathetic blueprint for helping marginalized people and facilitating admission to culture for all.

She was the matriarch of our community, multi-hyphenate star Pharrell Williams said of Avant. While I was not born and raised in LA, when I say our community I plan together along along with Black people. But all subsidiary communities looked at her as a brilliant, full of cartoon example of elegance. Someone greater than every share of that they had accumulated whose huge sum was experience.

. – Credit: Courtesy of the Avant Family

. – Credit: Courtesy of the Avant Family

Courtesy of the Avant Family

Just a few of her bona fides complement supporting the South Central Community Child Care Center, through which she was named president of the organization Neighbors of Watts. She served vis–vis the board of directors at UCLAs International Student Center and became a founding adherent of the academic worlds Rape Treatment Center board. For in this area 20 years, she and Clarence supported the building of what is today the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts  a premiere 90210 venue. Avant remained a dedicated believer of the Wallis board past its launch, and was a weekly attendee for the centers programming, said processing director Rachel Fine.

Both Jacquie and Clarence were effective from the outset as people who loved Beverly Hills and ones who in reality loved arts and culture. She was a intensely dedicated board aficionado, a consummate board sentient, and the most humble person I know, said Fine.

Avant’s 80th birthday celebration came days before global pandemic lockdowns in March 2020, Fine recalled.

She was giddy approximately this birthday celebration. At that party she asked the attendees, in lieu of gifts, to make contributions to the Wallis. They gave terribly generously because they held her in the highest regard, and they knew how important it was to her. As she got checks, she delivered them to me in person. The last era I axiom her by now the pandemic, she and Clarence drove all along to the Wallis in the pouring rain light them again, Fine said.

Avant had a unconditional affinity for the comfortable arts. She served regarding boards for the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, LACMAs East Asian Art Council, and was two-term board president of the Museum of African American Art of Los Angeles. Her famed buildup of Japanese lacquerware was presented at the Crow Collection of Asian Art in Dallas. It was a passion she passed as well as to to some of the most powerful people in media.

Jacquie is the person who taught me roughly the art world, particularly Black art. When I first started out, she introduced me to Artist Lane and Elizabeth Catlett. She was just as a outcome yielding in bringing me into a world that I had no knowledge practically whatsoever, Winfrey said.

Avant was in addition to remembered as a world-class hostess, witty figures back the President of Tanzania, President Bill Clinton, Senator Ted Kennedy, Governor Edmond Brown Jr., Mayor Tom Bradley and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

I have spent some of the loveliest days of my computer graphics when [the Avant’s]. They were there for the commencement of my educational, following I had a celebration for Sidney Poitiers 79th birthday, even just having dinner at Quincy Jones in flames, said Winfrey. My each and every one experience subsequently them has a been a joyful, celebratory, memorable occasion. Let me recommend you, this girl represents to me what the Bible says roughly, Who can locate a beatific woman?

Perhaps most indelible, Variety gleaned from many conversations, was the prudence of assuage she brought to an often-turbulent town and industry.

In telling you what I knew about her, I’m in addition to telling what I atmosphere later than was taken. With her, you realized you were caution somebody deep. It wasn’t a raindrop in a cup, it was more along surrounded by standing adjoining the ocean, said Williams.

Winfrey called Avant the softness concerning every share of edge. It makes no wisdom that her computer graphics would confront that way. I would dream to grow into that handy of elegance and realness she carried. I would purpose to gain that in my lifetime.

Avant is survived by her husband Clarence Avant and their two kids, Nicole (m. Sarandon) and Alexander Avant, as ably as her sister Jean Morse and a host of nieces, nephews and connections who loved her dearly.

In lieu of flowers, the relatives asks that donations be made to the Jacqueline Avant Memorial Fund at the MLK Health & Wellness Community Development Corporation.