Peter A. Benoliel, 93, civic leader who brought Quaker Chemical global and Settlement Music School into neighborhoods

Peter A. Benoliel, 93, a stalwart leader in the Philadelphia arts and culture sector and the longtime chief of Quaker Chemical Corp, died Monday, Feb. 17, at home in St. Davids.

Mr. Benoliel was known for blending his business acumen with a sensitivity for the complexities of running an arts and culture organization, especially those undergoing change. He was the Philadelphia Orchestra’s board chairman for some of the ensemble’s rockiest years, starting in 1995, as it endured a painful 64-day musicians’ strike and navigated the end of the classical recording industry’s long, lucrative era.

At the Settlement Music School, he was involved over an astonishing stretch of nearly seven decades — beginning with joining the board in 1957, and culminating last month in the school’s renaming of its Germantown Avenue site the “Peter A. Benoliel Germantown Branch.”

While stewarding arts groups, he was leading the global expansion of Quaker Chemical, the Conshohocken-based specialty chemicals company built by his father and uncle in the 1930s.

“There’s no shortage of corporate CEOs who get involved in nonprofit organizations because someone said that’s what a corporate CEO does,” said Joseph H. Kluger, the former chief of the Philadelphia Orchestra who is now an arts and culture consultant. “But Peter really walked the walk of the responsibility of those with resources to give back to the community and make those communities better places to live and work.”

Mr. Benoliel died after struggling with heart failure, which increasingly limited his activities, said his wife, Willo Carey. He lost his will to fight in late January, she said, “when one of his last pleasures of life, playing the violin, was no longer possible.”

Declining an invitation for a string quartet session, he wrote in an email of his lack of energy and ambition to continue what he said had been a charmed life.

“I can’t tell you why, other than today when I took my violin out to prepare for tomorrow I found much to my consternation the inability to bring the focus, the intention, the desire to make music. Life without these things is not life at all! Perhaps I’ve come to a point in life that suggests taking a break, a break that could very well last forever. Such it seems as I write this, overwhelming gratitude and love for all of you who have graced my life, for all of those who made it possible.”

Peter Andre Benoliel was one of two children born to Katherine K. Benoliel, a patron of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Academy of Music, and D. Jacques Benoliel, a businessman and trustee of the Free Library of Philadelphia. They shared a strong interest in Dickens, and after donating their collection of letters and other materials to the Free Library, the family continued to expand and support it. Today, the Philadelphia library boasts one of the largest Dickens collections in the U.S.

Their son carried on their interests. Mr. Benoliel was a member of the library’s foundation board and, from 1995 to 2000, was board chair of the orchestra, as well as a major donor to both groups.

“He was always the first to lead with a new idea or a question,” said Tobey Dichter, who served with Mr. Benoliel on the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation board. “He saw the big picture through the little picture, the details — he would question something in the budget because it led to a bigger thought.”

His son D. Jeffry Benoliel is the foundation’s current board chair.

Mr. Benoliel was born in 1932 in Philadelphia, graduated from Princeton (philosophy, with a minor in chemistry), and served in the U.S. Navy for 3½ years. He joined the family business in 1957 as a chemist, and from 1966 to 1992 was its president and CEO. During that time, Quaker expanded with subsidiaries and ventures in the Netherlands, the U.K., and Mexico, and moved into markets in France, China, Japan, and Brazil. The company launched an initial public offering in 1972 and began trading its shares on the New York Stock Exchange in 1996. It merged in 2019 in a $1.6 billion deal to become Quaker Houghton.

Mr. Benoliel sat on no fewer than a dozen corporate and charity boards, including serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia from 1989 to 1992. He attended Camp Tecumseh in New Hampshire as a child, and later joined the board and underwrote scholarships.

In the 1950s, he started working with Settlement Music School’s then-chief, Sol Schoenbach, on its expansion from Queen Street in South Philadelphia into other neighborhoods with branches, each with its own local board.

“He saw the value of bringing Settlement into communities and really being part of the fabric of these neighborhoods,” said Settlement CEO Helen Eaton. The school today has five branches.

Mr. Benoliel tended to work quietly, and was underappreciated as a fundraiser, Kluger said. Early on, he identified Sidney Kimmel as a prospective donor for what would become the Kimmel Center, and he was instrumental in landing a $10 million gift in 2000 from Walter and Leonore Annenberg to endow the Philadelphia Orchestra’s music director position.

“There was no one he was unwilling to ask,” Kluger said.

Tall with a crown of white hair, Mr. Benoliel projected a persona both elegant and warm.

“From the moment he met someone, he was so curious about them. He could connect with anyone,” Carey said.

“When you approached him, he had this patrician air,” said Ryan Fleur, interim president and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts. “But if you found the right thing to talk about, he was so genuine and passionate.”

His passions extended to Japanese history, literature and art, rare books, and the humanities, but inevitably the right thing to talk about was music. Mr. Benoliel loved playing chamber music. He participated in Philadelphia’s “Unstrung Heroes” benefit concerts that one year featured jurist Marjorie O. Rendell singing works of Alessandro Scarlatti and Sigmund Romberg and various governmental and business leaders playing piano, drums, and other instruments.

“He had this joie de vivre about being an amateur musician,” said Cathryn Coate, a friend of Mr. Benoliel’s, whose late husband, Robert Capanna, was the longtime head of Settlement Music School.

As a violinist himself, he was particularly supportive of the second violin section of the Philadelphia Orchestra, endowing three positions. His impulse to highlight the contribution of the individual artist found expression in his stipulation for one of his endowed gifts. The “Peter A. Benoliel Chair,” currently occupied by Philip Kates, will be renamed for Kates in perpetuity upon the violinist’s retirement.

“That speaks to Peter’s selfless sense,” Fleur said. “He saw the art for what it is and the role of artists in making the Philadelphia Orchestra special.”

“Music,” Mr. Benoliel once wrote, “is the deepest source of my spiritual life.”

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his sister, Lynn Jacobson; five children; three stepchildren; 25 grandchildren; two nieces; a nephew; and seven great-nieces and great-nephews. His previous wives, Felicity “Bebe” Benoliel and Constance W. Benoliel-Rock, died earlier.

A life celebration is being planned. Donations in his name may be made to the Free Library of Philadelphia and Settlement Music School.