Princess Elizabeth Karageorgu

Of The Manner Born to Serve

Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia has devoted herself to helping the people of her homeland

Forget the tiaras and ball gowns most often associated with European Royalty. Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia today weard the mantle of the humanitarian, the cloak of the altruist.

After a life in the fast lane that included a brief engagement to actor Richard Burton, a stint as an actress and a run as international spokeswoman for La Prairie Clinic in Switzerland, Princess Elizabeth has dedicated the last 10 years of her life to helping the people of her war-torn homeland.

Through the Princess Elizabeth Foundation, she has raised funds for medical supplies and medical missions to Serbia. She has smuggled supplies across the Hungarian border. She has bribed border guards. She has ignored the Communist ruling that decades ago placed her and her family in exile.

Princess Elizabeth's self-commissioned duty is to aid those who have lost their homes, their families and their health due to the political, civil and military strife in the Balkans.

“I’m like a professional refugee. I’ve been in exile since I was 4 years old, so I know what it feels like to have no home, " she said here recently.

Princess Elizabeth was in Houston as part of a national fund-raising tour for her own foundation and for Children of the World. They hope to raise $500,000 for a community resource center in Belgrade that was established by Children of the World with a grant from the European Union.

The local benefit - a masquerade gala at the Houstonian sponsored by Children of the World - is being followed by fund-raisers in San Diego, Denver and Philadelphia. The tour began with a benefit in Los Angeles last month.

Princess Elizabeth's road to becoming crusader for Serbia's war victims is a colorful one that began when she was a child. During World War II, the princess and her family fled their palace home in Belgrade during a coup d`etat.

Her parents - Prince Regent Paul of Yugoslavia and his wife, Princess Olga of Greece - led Elizabeth and her two brothers on an odyssey that included house arrest in Kenya for the duration of the war and later stints in South Africa, Switzerland and France.

After boarding school in Switzerland, Princess Elizabeth called France home until 1961, when she married clothing manufacturer Howard Oxenberg, 20 years her senior. They were married seven years and had two children, one of whom is actress Catherine Oxenberg. (In 1986, Princess Elizabeth told Chronicle gossip columnist Maxine Mesinger that her parents disinherited her for that marriage and never forgave her.)

Her second husband was British banker Neil Balfour, with whom she had a son before they divorced. (He is the only one of her children, she said, who has shown an interest in her work in the former Yugoslavia.)

The romance with Burton occurred in the mid-'70s. They met on the set of a movie, Jackpot, that never completed production.

Descended from Catherine the Great, Princess Elizabeth is cousin to England’s Prince Charles, the Duke of Kent Queen Sophie of Spain, King Michael of Romania and King Constantine of Greece.

The princess, who became a U.S. citizen five years ago, has called New York home for two decades.

Her lineage is not information discussed by the circumspect princess, whose focus while in Houston was pointedly on the needs of the Serbian people.

Fit, attractive, displaying a steel determination, Princess Elizabeth admit that she was not always so dedicated to her homeland.

"To be uprooted in the middle of the night is very traumatizing for a child. So I had to forgive them (the Yugoslavian people) before I could help them. This was a very interesting thing I went through in 1989. My first obligation was for my father, who was such an amazing human being. After that, I had to forgive what they did to him and inadvertently, to me before I could help them”, she said.

Princess Elizabeth provided research for a biography of her father that was published in Britain in 1980 and later published in Yugoslavia.

“I figured if I had done that, then do more. So I started the foundation. I could see there were going to be a lot of problems coming. There were going to be wars. There was going be strife, struggles, misunderstandings. So I've been working for them (the people of Serbia) ever since."

In the past 14 years, she has ignored the exile ruling and visited her homeland 66 times. She said that she has put her own resources into the foundation, which has no paid employees, and has only an advisory board.

"I feel that if one is from that background (royal) the obligation is to serve the people. My motto is 'Service is love in action."'

Four years ago, Princess Elizabeth. in conjunction with Merv Griffin, introduced two fragrances with bath lines on the QVC shopping network. The products are named E, a tribute to her grandmother, the Grand Duchess Helen (Elllen) of Russia, and Mon Ange part of. The proceeds go to the foundation.

Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia is the third royal that Children of the World has brought to Houston to raise money for children in war-torn areas of Eastern Europe. Queen Anne and Princess Margarita of Romania have attended previous fund-raisers here.