Denise Orme


Jessie Smither, Duchess of Leinster, known by her stage name Denise Orme, was an English music hall singer, actress and musician who appeared regularly at the Alhambra and Gaiety Theatres in London in the early years of the 20th century. Married, successively, to an English baron, a Danish millionaire, and an Irish duke, she was the maternal grandmother of Aga Khan IV.
In the 1940s, Orme owned and operated the Beech Hill hotel at Rushlake Green in Sussex, England.

Life and career

The daughter of Alfred John Smither and Jessicah Henrietta Pococke, she studied at the Royal Academy of Music and later the Royal College of Music where she was 'discovered' as a singer by George Edwardes.
Orme's first stage appearance was in 1906 in the chorus of The Little Michus at Daly's Theatre in London, later taking the role of Blanche Marie in that production. Later the same year, she appeared in the title role of See See at the Prince of Wales Theatre then appeared in The Merveilleuses into early 1907. In 1906, she also participated in gramophone recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado. After the birth of her first daughter, she returned to the stage in The Hon'ble Phil in October 1908, and as Lady Elizabeth Thanet in Our Miss Gibbs at the Gaiety Theatre, London.

Personal life

Orme was married three times, her husbands being:
In the late 1930s, Orme had an affair with Esmé Ivo Bligh, 9th Earl of Darnley. Her cousin Ethel Rose Kendall, who acted under the name Eileen Orme, married, in 1908, the Hon. Maurice Nelson Hood, son and heir of the second Viscount Bridport.