Isabella De La Houssaye ’86

Isabella, the lawyer, mother, art curator, and endurance athlete, died Dec. 2, 2023, almost six years after a diagnosis of non-small-cell lung cancer. She was 59 and a lifetime nonsmoker.

Isabella came to us from the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, La. At Princeton, she majored in politics and joined Cap and Gown. Her senior thesis, “Habib Bourguiba’s Political Longevity: Thirty Years of Control in Tunisia,” explored a major figure in the country’s push for independence.

She earned a law degree from Columbia in 1990, where she was the first female editor-in-chief of the Journal of Transnational Law and then practiced with White & Case in New York and Hong Kong. After this, she worked to bringing pan-cultural ethnographic items to the United States by starting Material Culture, a store and auction house in Philadelphia.

Outside the office, she founded Bike, Breathe, Believe, a nonprofit using cycling to promote cancer awareness. Together with her husband, she cycled across the country in 2020 to raise awareness about the risk of lung cancer to never smokers.

Summarizing her life as an explorer here is impossible. She climbed mountains (four of the Seven Summits), ran more than 100 marathons, and walked the Camino de Santiago twice, often with a family member. The Explorers Club named her a fellow.

To her husband, David Crane ’81, and her children, Cason ’17, David ’18, Bella, Oliver ’22, and Chris, the Class of 1986 offers our condolences as well as our appreciation for sharing Isabella (and your house) with us.