Mary Alice Dorrance Malone, Campbell’s largest individual shareholder and horse farm founder, dies at 75
She founded the Iron Spring Horse Farm in 1976 and at the time of her death, was the longest-tenured Campbell's board member.
Mary Alice Dorrance Malone, the quiet Campbell’s soup heiress who bred Olympic-grade equestrian stallions in Chester County, died June 16, a spokesperson for the Camden-based firm confirmed. She was 75 years old.
Campbell’s shareholders first elected Ms. Malone to the company’s board in 1990, the firm said in a statement. At the time of her death, Ms. Malone was Campbell’s longest-tenured board member and its largest individual shareholder at 18%.
“We are deeply saddened by the passing of Mary Alice,” Campbell’s board chairman Keith R. McLoughlin wrote. “As a descendant of the company’s founder and a significant long-term shareholder, her contributions to grow and protect Campbell’s legacy were immeasurable. She will be missed in our board meetings and as a friend and colleague. On behalf of my fellow board members, we extend our heartfelt condolences to her family and friends.”
The company’s statement didn’t disclose a cause of death.
Mary Alice Dorrance Malone was born Feb. 3, 1950, to John T. Dorrance Jr., who served as Campbell’s president for 24 years, and Angeline Carter Ferguson Dorrance. Ms. Malone was the granddaughter of John T. Dorrance, the Bristol-born chemist responsible for condensed soup. Dorrance’s formula made it possible for buyers all over the world to keep the products in their pantries for months on end as a thick, saucy canned substance families could prepare using little more than heat.
The creation turned Campbell’s into an international food-products powerhouse; Dorrance bought the company from his uncle in 1914 and eventually passed ownership to his children when he died.
Ms. Malone and her brothers ultimately inherited larger stakes in Campbell’s soup than several of their cousins in the late 1980s and early 1990s; several inheritors sold a significant number of shares to outsiders in 1991.
An activist investor challenged Campbell’s ownership structure in an attempted 2018 takeover, but Ms. Malone’s shares in the company all but guaranteed she and other heirs would have had to agree to any major changes. A deal between investors and the family ultimately expanded the Campbell’s board without any forced removals.
Ms. Malone consistently appeared on Forbes’s rankings of the wealthiest Americans throughout the 2010s and ranked 887th on its 2025 list of billionaires.
Largely raised in Chester County, Ms. Malone’s love of horses began early: She was a member of Gladwyne’s Bridlewood Pony Club and opened both pony and dressage clubs in Southern Arizona in the 1970s.
She wasn’t alone in her passion. The Dorrance family tree is dotted with horse enthusiasts: One of Ms. Malone’s brothers lived for 15 years on a Wyoming ranch, and a cousin presided over the National Steeplechase Association.
Ms. Malone founded the Iron Spring Horse Farm in 1976. Iron Spring maintained two stables — one in the southern horse country of Wellington, Fla., and another in Coatesville. Her greatest competitive success came with Rampal, a stallion who together with Ms. Malone won 14 Grand Prix equestrian events and earned a place on the U.S. national team’s shortlist.
Ms. Malone’s equestrian career featured prominently in a 2010s-era extortion case: Agnes O’Brien, a Chester County caterer, sent the famously low-profile Ms. Malone an email titled “When the Soup Boils Over,” threatening to provide details of her personal life to filmmakers and book publishers. O’Brien, who had traveled abroad with Ms. Malone, demanded an interest-free “loan” of $200,000 upfront and payments of $250,000 a year afterward. O’Brien admitted to the extortion scheme in a 2011 plea deal that kept her out of prison.
Ms. Malone remained involved with Iron Spring for the rest of her life; descendants of horses bred or trained there have competed and earned awards across levels of equestrian competition, including the Olympics. And the North American arm of the Royal Warmblood Studbook of the Netherlands gave Ms. Malone a lifetime achievement award earlier this year, according to the equestrian news site Eurodressage.
Ms. Malone was married to former Chester County Planning Commission chair Stuart H. Malone from 1981 to 1990; she is survived by daughters Mary Alice Dorrance Malone and Catherine Dorrance Malone as well as brothers John T. Dorrance III and Bennett Dorrance.
“Funeral arrangements are not public,” the Campbell’s statement read. “The family respectfully requests privacy during this time of mourning.”