Gloria Vanderbilt may have been born a millionaire, but her inheritance was far less than the millions she made over the course of her lifetime.
In her twenties and thirties she scooped up large investment properties in Florida and Manhattan while her fifties and sixties were spent creating and growing a clothing and housewares empire on the back of her iconic jeans.
Her hard work paid off handsomely in the end, and proved she was nothing like her parents, who had squandered millions while living off the money of her great-great grandfather Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt.
There is also little left of that fortune however, due to Vanderbilt's lavish spending over the years and some bad business decisions that cost her millions.
This may explain why Vanderbilt did not leave behind a trust for her son Anderson Cooper.
Diamonds and pearls: Gloria Vanderbilt (above) was born with a $2.5 million trust the had grown to $4.3 million by the time she was 21, but will not leave a trust behind for her sons
Blue jean baby: In her fifties and sixties it was her line of jeans and clothing that made her a millionaire many times over
'I don’t believe in inheriting money. I think it’s an initiative sucker. I think it’s a curse,' Cooper told Howard Stern in 2014.
'Who has inherited a lot of money that has gone on to do things in their own life?
'From the time I was growing up, if I felt that there was some pot of gold waiting for me, I don't know that I would've been so motivated.'
Vanderbilt's inheritance was a point of interest from the time she was born, which is when she came into a $2.5 million trust.
That trust could not be touched however until she was 21, a matter that quickly became an issue when her father Reginald passed away just months after her birth.
Reginald had squandered all of his $25 million inheritance, and Vanderbilt's mother seemed intent to do the same with her daughter's money.
Mrs. Gloria Vanderbilt was a minor herself when Reginald died, ultimately received a sum of $4,000 a week for the care of her daughter.
That allowance was used not for Vanderbilt though, but rather for her mother as she dragged the youngster across Europe.
This promptly stopped when Vanderbilt's aunt Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney petitioned for custody and won, though Vanderbilt did pay out an allowance to both her mother and grandmother for the rest of their lives.
Vanderbilt was provided for by her aunt, and in the annual report of her spending for 1939 it was noted that she had used just $10 of the $25,750 she was able to access.
The teenager was set to inherit millions more as well until she went to live with her mother at age 17 in Los Angeles.
It was not that decision so much as the one that followed that upset her aunt, whose estate was worth an estimated $78 million and would go on to fund the famed New York City museum that was named in her honor.
Vanderbilt married Pat DiCicco, an alleged mobster who was 15 years her senior, and in response was taken out of her aunt's will.
It is unclear if that changed however when she left DiCicco in January of 1945.
That was one month before she came into her Vanderbilt money, which thanks to wise investments over the course of 21 years and the death of her half-sister Cathleen two years prior, had grown to over $5 million.
Once all necessary payments and taxes were taken care of, the total was just shy of $4.3
