Eleanor Robson Belmont, actress socialite and philanthropist was born December 13, 1878 in Wigan Lancashire England to an actress mother and a musician father. Her father died when she was very young and her mother Madge Carr Cook remarried to the actor Augustus Cook immigrated to America. Eleanor was educated in American boarding schools after which she joined her mother Madge Carr Cook in the San Francisco-based Frawley Stock Company. She quickly graduated to starring roles while touring with the company. In 1900 she moved to New York where she was signed by the impresario George Tyler of Liebler and Company. She was a sensation acclaimed for her beauty her sweet rich speaking voice and her natural manner. Her greatest hit was Israel Zangwill's Merely Mary Ann in 1903. While playing the role in London, she captivated George Bernard Shaw who wrote Major Barbara for her. She was never able to play the part she inspired due to contractual obligations, but she continued to be a popular draw starring in Nurse Marjorie (1906), Salomy Jane (1907), and Dawn of Tomorrow (1909). In 1910, she left the stage to marry the banker, August Belmont.

After marriage, as she tells us in her autobiography Fabric of Memory, life became a "world of horses, polo, social events, new friends, civic interests, and farming." She supported her husband's pursuits including the Belmont racing stables, the construction of the New York Subway, and the Cape Cod Canal. Both Belmonts actively took part in the war effort in World War I. Mrs. Belmont was appointed to the American Red Cross and she courageously traveled dangerous waters to personally inspect the Red Cross overseas effort. After the war, she helped develop the peacetime American Red Cross.

Mrs. Belmont was widowed in 1924 but continued to be active in philanthropic causes. During the Great Depression, she raised funds with the Women's Committee of the Central Emergency Unemployment Relief Agency devoting special attention to the needs of the single working woman. When World War II broke out Mrs. Belmont again served the war effort through the Red Cross.

Mrs. Belmont maintained her interest in the theater. In 1931, she co-wrote and produced a play In the Next Room. Her theatrical fame and her training as an actress had contributed to her success as a fundraiser, and the performing arts remained one of her causes. She was especially fond of the Metropolitan Opera Company. In 1933, she became the first woman to sit on its Board of Directors. She founded the Metropolitan Opera Guild in 1935 as a permanent vehicle for raising money and as a basis of support. She lived to see the Opera emerge from the precarious financial predicament in which she found it to become a thriving, well-supported, well-attended institution.

Mrs. Belmont died at the age of 101 in 1979. On her hundredth birthday, December 13, 1978, she had told the New York Times that, "the secret to long life is no diet no special care nothing like that. It's doing what you want and doing it happily."