Elizabeth’s parents divorced when she was 7 and her mother married Prince George of Denmark. Elizabeth was immediately sent to boarding school. She often said that she learned nothing but good manners there.
Her father died when she was 15, and her older brother Patrick Lichfield, then only 17, inherited the family’s 17th-century estate, Shugborough Hall, in the Central England region. Elizabeth did it for Patrick.
“I had to grow up very quickly,” she said.
With her mother away, Lady Elizabeth planned her own debut party, a scary and overwhelming experience that inspired her business.
In 1972 she married Geoffrey Shakerley, a baron, at Westminster Abbey. Princess Anne was a bridesmaid. The couple divorced in 2009.
Lady Elizabeth is survived by her daughter Fiona Burrows; two stepsons, Joth and Nicholas Shakerley; and four grandchildren.
Lady Elizabeth was not immune to personal and financial setbacks. In the early 1990s, an investment in Lloyd’s of London, the insurance market, disappeared when the company’s losses left it and thousands of wealthy investors liable in the financial crisis.
When Ivana Trump, newly divorced from Donald J. Trump, hired Lady Elizabeth to organize a 50th birthday party for Ms. Trump’s then fiancé Riccardo Mazzucchelli in 1993 and then doubled the guest list, Ms. Trump refused to pay the difference. The two spent years in court as Lady Elizabeth struggled to recover the approximately $ 9,000 amount. She lost.
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