Hirut Desta
Ethiopian Princess (1930-2014)
Princess Hirut Desta (also Princess Ruth Desta; 20 April 1930 - 2015) was the daughter of Ras Desta Damtew and Princess Tenagnework Haile Selassie, and granddaughter of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. She was the widow of General Nega Tegegn, who was governor of the provinces of Begemder and Semien. She was described by Nathaniel T. Kenney as a "trim, most democratic of princesses," who "was not above grabbing a tool from a workman, I suspect, and showing him how to use it."
Princess Hirut was educated at the School of St Clare (renamed Bolitho School), Penzance, Cornwall, and at Clarendon School for Girls, Abergele, North Wales.
She volunteered at the Haile Selassie I University's Library and Rita Pankhurst who was one of the library's directors wrote about how helpful she was.
Desta was imprisoned by the Derg from 1974 until 1988. Princess Hirut Desta died in London aged 85 in 2015, and her funeral was conducted at the Holy Trinity Cathedral in Addis Ababa.
Patronages
President of the Committee for the Restoration of the Churches of Lalibela.
Honours
National honours
Dame Grand Cordon of the Order of the Queen of Sheba.
Imperial Coronation Medal (1930).
Jubilee Medal (1955).
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5771862. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 2015, 1974 and 1988.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hirut Desta” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.