Life by Design, A: The Art and Lives of Florence Broadhurst

Late in the afternoon of 16 October 1977, seventy-eight year-old Florence Broadhurst was brutally murdered. Her killer was never found.

The mystery surrounding Florence’s death is in keeping with the elegant artifice of her life. Born in rural Australia, Florence soon decided Queensland was too small a stage. She travelled the world, changing her name and business as she went–a performing arts academy in Shanghai, a fashion salon in London and a husband or two until finally, in 1949, she returned to Australia. This time Broadhurst claimed to be an English woman escaping post-war London for the sunshine of the ‘promised land’.

1959 saw her drawing on images she had gathered from her travels to create a flourishing business, Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers. By the time of her death Florence Broadhurst was a successful socialite–and a wealthy woman. But who was she, this generous, ferociously autocratic and evasive woman? In A Life by Design we get a glimpse of the woman behind the hand-printed brocades and mysterious life.