Westfield co-founder John Saunders’ daughter Monica Saunders-Weinberg is reshaping his legacy
At their art-filled home in LA she and husband Richard Weinberg are building their own business empire with a creative and philanthropic heart.
Stepping into the luxurious Los Angeles apartment of Monica Saunders-Weinberg and her husband Richard Weinberg is like visiting an intimate modern art gallery. Every wall and surface in the family’s expansive US base is adorned with jaw-dropping pieces from some of the world’s most influential artists.
Enthusiasts would immediately recognise Doug Aitken’s MORE (shattered pour) mirror installation, Mark Bradford’s abstract collage Single Umbrella and Andreas Gursky’s Prada I, a large-scale photograph that had to be craned into the space. The floors and shelves are scattered with more playful sculptures by artists including KAWS and Haas Brothers.
Even to the untrained eye, you feel awe from the moment you enter the apartment, set within an exclusive LA hotel. It has all the trimmings you would expect in the home of one of Australia’s wealthiest women, the daughter of Westfield co-founder John Saunders. But what makes Monica and Richard’s pad so unexpectedly impressive is the warmth that it emanates. Despite the incredibly valuable artwork on display, it doesn’t feel pretentious. There’s no denying the aesthetic opulence, but there is also an authenticity of spirit embedded in the fabric of the family who inhabits it.
It’s a tangible reflection of the traditionally private couple, who welcomed WISH into their home for an exclusive glimpse at how they have evolved the family business since the death of Saunders in 1997, when Monica was just 19.
The candid and genuinely engaging couple, married now for 21 years, banter and bounce off each other throughout our interview at their vast marble dining table.
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Saunders-Weinberg, 46, is realising her own aspirations and taking stock of how far she has come since being thrust into the spotlight and managing her father’s real estate business, Terrace Tower Group, with her sister Betty Saunders-Klimenko. “I think there’s a point in life where at 20 to 30, being called an heiress is the thing that I sort of had to swallow. I couldn’t really write my own narrative differently, nor did I want to. But now I’m 46, I’ve got three grown-ish children. I’m actually my own individual person and I’ve earned it and I’m doing it,” Saunders-Weinberg says.
“I’m always proud to be [Saunders’ daughter]. I’ll forever be grateful for that. They’re big shoes to fill. But I’m also an individual, and I think that narrative is starting to become a little bit more important to me.”
Weinberg adds: “I don’t want to be disrespectful at all, but it’s not Mon’s father’s business anymore. It’s the next generation. I spent the first 10 years saying, ‘I am a caretaker for John Saunders and his legacy’ and it is still John Saunders’s legacy. I’m not in any way denigrating that, but there does come a point where it’s now our generation, and it’s Mon and her sister and me running the business and our life.”
While they have transformed Terrace Tower Group from a real estate business to an integrated investment group, they’ve also been pursuing passion projects that have added to their substantial fortune. “We’ve always loved real estate and collected as individuals along the way. And we’ve been active in investing and growing our individual portfolio, which is something that’s under me and my office. I do that on a day-to-day basis. But that’s managing; that’s not actually me as a human, claiming myself and autonomy and seeking what feeds me,” Saunders-Weinberg says.
In the past year she has taken a childhood love of theatre to the next level as lead producer for a new musical, 44: The unOfficial, unSanctioned Obama Musical, based on former US President Obama. It’s more than merely a financial investment; she is engaged at every level. “You’ve got to love it with your whole being because it’s hard work. I’ve never felt more alive. I’ve never felt more like me as a human,” she says.
“I think there’s a point in life where at 20 to 30, being called an heiress is the thing that I sort of had to swallow. I couldn’t really write my own narrative differently, nor did I want to. But now I’m 46, I’ve got three grown-ish children. I’m actually my own individual person, and I’ve earned it, and I’m doing it.” - Monica Saunders-Weinberg
“Nothing has ever required every single part of me – mind, body, spirit, creativity – like this production. I’m even more in love with this process than I thought possible, and sharing the journey with one of my best friends balances the work with pure joy.”
Saunders-Weinberg is also teaming up with acclaimed Australian producer Bruna Papandrea to adapt Fiona McIntosh’s novel The Pearl Thief into a film. She fell in love with the book and brought the team together because she believed the epic story of a female heroine in the Holocaust had to be told.
Papandrea also invited her to be an executive producer on Addition, starring Teresa Palmer. The film, which touches on mental health struggles, was selected to premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. “Mental health is a real thing for me. Bruna knows that, and she sent me the script for [Addition] … That’s driven by mental health, which is a key thing for me because my brother was mentally disabled. He passed away a year ago, and my mum [also] had mental health issues. So, for me, all my paths and everything I’m called to is really from a sense of healing and fixing things up from the past,” she says.
Weinberg has equally established himself as a force in Hollywood alongside actor/producer Tobey Maguire. They became firm friends when Maguire came to Australia alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in 2011 to shoot Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.
Maguire and Weinberg have produced several award-winning films together, including Brittany Runs a Marathon, which took out the Audience Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, and Get Duked, which won the 2019 Midnighters Audience Award at SXSW. “Every single thing that we’ve done in terms of Hollywood, we’ve never sought it, either of us; it’s stemmed through genuine friendship,” Saunders-Weinberg says.
The couple are a formidable team because they complement each other so well. “He is business driven with a creative overlay, whereas I’m creative with a business overlay,” she says. They share a deep passion for contemporary art, which started as a hobby but has now become part of their business.
“Art is a very important part of our portfolio. It’s a fun part, but it’s actually a really significant part of our portfolio,” says Weinberg, who is also on the board of Australians in Film, the Los Angeles based non-profit film and television foundation.
Some of the most striking pieces are in their LA home, and others in their Sydney base. Some have been gifted to galleries, while many are in storage. “Come to any of our homes, nothing is staged; everything that we have is something we love or something that reminds us of somewhere we’ve been, photos, art, anything that makes us feel good,” says Saunders-Weinberg. “Everything that we have is perfectly imperfect. I grew up in a museum-type house, so I never want to feel like that. Everything has to feel homely and warm.”
Weinberg, who does most of the research and sourcing for the couple’s collection, says they choose art with their hearts and their heads. “There’s a lot of people, more so in America than Australia, when you see wealthier people’s art collections, they buy the greatest hits, so when you walk in the room, they want everyone to go, ‘That’s a that, that’s a that’, and that’s just not us. We want to buy great artists, and we are collectors of great artists, but it’s not going to be obvious,” he says. “Some of the art is of the now and hot and considered cool and whatever. It’s there for us, the home, and our lives, versus there to make a statement.”
Saunders-Weinberg designs the interiors of their homes, as well as high-end residential developments. “My whole style is laidback luxury, which is definitely what I am. It stems
from everything I do. I’m quiet about things, but I’m layered, I’m very thoughtful, I’m very conscious about everything. I’m a detail freak. Even though things don’t always look perfect, everything is highly considered and comes from a deep place in me,” she says.
She takes inspiration from her sister Betty who found her passion and personal success outside the family business as owner of Erebus Motorsport in the Supercars Championship.
Despite her own complex upbringing, Saunders-Weinberg is determined to give the couple’s children, Brooklyn, 18, Ashton, 16, and Hudson, 14, a solid and nurturing home base.
“You know, the oak tree is an acorn before it’s an oak tree, right? We want to try as much as possible to give them the least amount of stuff to unravel later,” she says.
“Priority numbers one, two, and three are my kids. It’s a very high-value thing that I always wanted to be a present mother and do what I could for them. My trajectory, as you know, my dad died when I was 19 so I didn’t get the opportunity to finish uni or do any of that stuff. I was thrown in the deep end of the business. Obviously, privilege and gratitude and all those things, but there is a weight of the responsibility and trying to navigate all of that.”
While they love LA (Saunders-Weinberg was named after Santa Monica Boulevard), they felt strongly their children be raised in Australia. “There was a fork in the road where we had to decide, ‘Should we spend more time in LA or Australia?’. And we looked at each other and said, ‘We want our kids to be balanced. We want them to be Aussie’. The values are being low-key, being thoughtful about who we are as humans, and not being the typical rich person. You know, that is very much instilled,” Weinberg says.
Saunders-Weinberg, who is also a patron of NON – New Old Now – dance company and executive chair of the Saunders Family Foundation, has also reached a point where she finally feels like she is where she is supposed to be.
“All these different skill sets that have been acquired along the way, from philanthropy to entertaining to being part of things behind the scenes, to charities, to responsibilities, to scheduling for everybody. I never knew my skill set would come into play, and now, I say this very openly, I’m on my yellow brick road. It’s been through a lot of personal growth, development and healing [that has] allowed me to get to this spot. I don’t take any of this for granted. It’s been a spiritual journey of cleaning up, making sense of, and healing to allow the real me to come to the surface.”
Photographer: Nathan Perkel
Stylist: Natasha Devereux
Hair: Diane Dusting
Make-up: Danielle Pavia
Production: Casey Pippet
This story is from the December issue of WISH.
