Groom’s ex revels in new-found freedom
Tennis, drinks and Instagram posts: how Dara spent the big day
ON THE day her former fiance Edo Mapelli Mozzi married Princess Beatrice, Dara Huang enjoyed a relaxed and carefree evening sharing drinks with friends.
At what could have been a difficult time, the Chinese-American architect appeared in high spirits as she sat outside a fashionable restaurant in Belgravia, London.
While not among the guests at Edo and Beatrice’s intimate wedding at All Saints Church on the Windsor estate, Dara maintains an amicable relationship with the couple. Indeed, Dara and Edo’s four-year-old son Wolfie was a page boy and best man.
It is in contrast to the apparent tension which first surrounded her split from property developer Edo, 36, and the beginning of his relationship with Beatrice.
When news of Edo and Beatrice’s romance became public in December 2018, Dara’s father Po-Tien accused the Royal Family of helping to rob his daughter of the chance to walk down the aisle with Edo.
‘Why would they want to go and break this up?’ the retired Nasa scientist said. ‘I can’t understand it. It’s not fair, but the Royal Family are very powerful.’
However, her father’s apparent frustration did not result in Dara cutting ties with her ex-partner. In January, a friend of the pair insisted they remained close, with Dara even cutting Edo’s hair and occasionally buying him clothes.
And on Friday evening, a few hours after Edo’s low-key marriage to Beatrice, 31, Dara appeared untroubled as, wearing a face mask and carrying a bag from a designer boutique, she met friends outside the trendy Motcombs restaurant. Wearing ripped black shorts and a white T-shirt under a quilted jacket, she was seen laughing with a male friend.
Earlier, she enjoyed a tennis lesson in Chelsea, West London. Sporting a baseball cap and sunglasses, Dara posted a series of pictures of her training session on her Instagram page with a string of motivational slogans including ‘growing better’, ‘be your best self’ and ‘nobody is perfect’.
She added: ‘Criticism is fuel for your fire! My tennis coach likes to take photos of my pathetic form so I can improve myself every day. If you can’t see what’s wrong, how can you fix it?’
After graduating from Harvard
University with a MA in Architecture, Dara worked at architectural firms across Europe, including Foster and Partners in London.
In 2013, she set up her own architecture and interior design company, DH Liberty, with clients including Harrods, Cartier and the Four Seasons hotel chain.
Her Instagram feed is crammed with glamorous pictures from her jet-set career, including images posted last week from Valletta, Malta, and others taken earlier this month during a trip to Lake Maggiore in Italy.
Her LinkedIn profile describes how she ‘ came from an entrepreneurial family, with a mother who owned her own business’ and reveals that she has two homes, in Hong Kong and London.
In a video posted online on the day of Beatrice and Edo’s wedding, Dara described how she got her business career off the ground despite not having any wealthy backers.
‘As a young designer, essentially
I was never funded, f dd I never had any ambassadors and I personally didn’t have any money either – or I didn’t have any fancy parents with money to give me.
‘ I had t o basically do what the market was asking me to do. And that was our way of funding our projects and growing as a practice.’
Dara met Edo through her work for his property company Banda in 2015. Within a year they had moved in together, got engaged and had their son, Christopher – who is referred to as ‘Wolfie’.
It is unclear when exactly they separated, but Edo is believed to have started seeing Beatrice after her sister Princess Eugenie’s wedding in October 2018. He proposed a year later.
Her father has said he believed his daughter knew nothing about Edo’s relationship until it was reported by the media.
‘ Dara came back home from London for Thanksgiving with Wolfie. She didn’t know anything about it and the next day her friend emailed the newspaper report to her,’ he said.
At the end of 2018, Dara shared a photograph of Wolfie on social media, captioned: ‘ Love, laugh, share, forgive.’ It was widely interpreted to be a sign that she held no grudges.
When an ecstatic Beatrice, who is ninth in line to the throne, and Edo announced their engagement last September, Dara signalled her approval. ‘I wish the best for Edo and Beatrice and look forward to uniting our families,’ she said.
They are still close – she even cuts Edo’s hair
A small reminder that ig is just pretty images and you never really know what people are going through, so small reminder to please be kind