Ava Alice Muriel Astor Pleydell-Bouverie was an American heiress, socialite, and member of the Astor family. She was the daughter of John Jacob Astor IV and Ava Lowle Willing, and sister of Vincent Astor and half-sister of John Jacob Astor VI Ava was born on July 7, 1902, in Manhattan, New York. In September 1911, Ava and her mother moved to England. They lived in her townhouse on Grosvenor Square in Mayfair, London (from October–April) and her country estate, Sutton Place in Guildford, Surrey (from May–September), and she was educated at Notting Hill High School. On July 24, 1924, Ava Astor married Prince Sergei Platonovich "Serge" Obolensky, son of General Platon Sergeyevich Obolensky and Maria Konstantinovna Naryshkina, at Savoy Chapel in London. The marriage was considered the event of the season in England that year. Her brother Vincent gave her a Palladian Revival stone residence on his estate near Rhinebeck, New York. The house was north of his own "Ferncliff Casino" ("Astor Courts") and also overlooked the Hudson River. Ava named it "Marienruh" and retained it through her life. Before divorcing Serge in 1932, they had two children. On January 21, 1933, she married Raimund von Hofmannsthal (1906–1974), son of Gertrud Schlesinger and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, an Austrian novelist, librettist, and dramatist. The couple was married in the city court of Newark, New Jersey. Together, the couple had a daughter. On March 27, 1940, she married Philip John Ryves Harding (1906–1972), a journalist, in Faversham, England. At the time of their wedding, Harding, a cousin of Maxwell Eley, was serving with an anti-aircraft battery in the British Army. Before their divorce in 1945, they had one daughter. On May 12, 1946, her fourth and final marriage to David Pleydell-Bouverie before divorcing in 1952. Alice died of a stroke in her East Sixty-First Street apartment, Manhattan, New York City, on July 19, 1956 at age 54.