Doris Duke was only 12 years old when she inherited Rough Point in 1925… along with her father's $80 million fortune. James Duke, founder of American Tobacco and the Duke Energy Company and a benefactor of North Carolina's Duke University, had purchased the seaside Newport estate, built in 1889 by Frederick W. Vanderbilt, just three years earlier.
His only child, who was nicknamed "Million Dollar Baby" by the press, did what most girls would do with a tremendous sum of money. She went shopping.
