Diane Marie Disney Miller was an American philanthropist and the daughter of Walt and Lillian Disney.
Born in 1933, Diane lived a private life much like her sister, Sharon, while her father's business grew from a simple animation studio to a multi-million dollar corporation. She attended the University of Southern California where she met her husband, Ron W. Miller, on a blind date. They married on May 9, 1954 and would go on to have seven children. When Miller joined the family company, Diane devoted much of her time at home while writing articles about her father for local newspapers and, in 1957, published the book The Story of Walt Disney. From her father's death until her own, Diane donated nearly five million dollars to various charities within the United States and devoted herself to preserving his legacy. One example of this is the establishment of The Walt Disney Family Foundation in 1995, whose purpose is to assemble material, study, teach and preserve, and publish and display material appropriate to communicate the vision and legacy of Walt Disney.
In the early 1970s, she and her husband purchased a vineyard in Napa Valley, California. Starting in 1981 they operated the Silverado Vineyards Winery on a tract of their Napa property. After Miller's tenure as CEO of Walt Disney Productions ended in 1984, when Diane's cousin, Roy E. Disney, supported Miller's ouster in favor of Michael Eisner and Frank Wells, the couple focus their attention on the winery. In 1987, Diane was instrumental in pushing ahead with the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. The project was initiated with a $50 million gift from her mother but got bogged down in wrangling over costs. She ensured the original design by Frank Gehry went ahead, and it finally opened in 2004.
At the 50th birthday celebration of Disneyland on July 17, 2005, Diane read her father's original dedication and later opened the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco, California in 2009.
Diane died on November 19, 2013, one month shy of her 80th birthday, at her home in Napa, California, after succumbing to injuries from a fall she suffered in September. The 2013 film Saving Mr. Banks was dedicated to her. She and Ron also received a special thank you in Pixar's Inside Out.
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Bottom: Diane Disney Miller, Lillian Disney, Sharon Disney Lund
