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Marti Huizenga, who gave millions to help students and women, dies at 74

Roy Erickson
/
Courtesy of Florida Memory
Wayne and Marti Huizenga at a charity event in Fort Lauderdale in 1988.

Marti Huizenga’s husband, Wayne, once joked, “I’m always the second fiddle, except at the office.”

At the time he said that, Huizenga, the first U.S. entrepreneur to launch three Fortune 500 companies — Waste Management, Blockbuster Entertainment and AutoNation — was paying tribute to his wife for her own philanthropic activities which, in South Florida, proved legion.

Marti Huizenga, who died Tuesday at 74, served on the boards of many organizations, including the Boys and Girls Clubs of Broward County and the Humane Society of Broward County. In 1999, she and her husband donated $4 million to Nova Southeastern University in Davie. The institution named its business school the H. Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship.

She also supported the American Heart Association, the Humane Society, the American Cancer Society, the Performing Arts Center Authority, Kids in Distress, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the Horatio Alger Association and the Child Care Connection.

Huizenga donated $750,000 to Holy Cross Hospital to support the Dorothy Mangurian Comprehensive Women’s Center at Holy Cross Hospital. The hospital’s Marti Huizenga Meditation Chapel and Healing Garden was named in recognition of her, a cancer survivor. There is also a Marti Huizenga Animal Shelter in Davie.

Huizenga is survived by her husband, Wayne; their five children, and 11 grandchildren.

You can read her full obituary at our news partner, the Miami Herald.

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