Adrienne Arsht is a business leader and impact philanthropist. She has taken a leading role promoting artistic, business, and civic growth in the three cities she calls home: Washington, D.C., Miami and New York. Her $30 million contribution to Miami’s Performing Arts Center in 2008 secured its financial footing. In her honor, the Center was renamed the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County. In 2012, her contribution of $10 million to Lincoln Center was recognized with the dedication of the Adrienne Arsht Stage in Alice Tully Hall.

Recently, Ms. Arsht donated $ 10 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in support of the METLIVEARTS performance series. This is the single largest gift to the Department of Live Arts and will fund Department activities that uplift and highlight themes of resilience through art.

In October 2022, Ms. Arsht donated $10 million to the Smithsonian Institution to launch the Adrienne Arsht Community-Based Resilience Solutions Initiative, a multi-year program to research tropical resilience and educate the public about the role resilience plays in shaping the world around us.

In April 2022, in Washington DC, Ms. Arsht announced a $25 million gift to endow the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council. The Center was founded in 2013 to focus on the role of Latin America and the Caribbean in the trans-Atlantic community. In 2016, Ms. Arsht spearheaded the creation of the Adrienne Arsht Center for Resilience at The Atlantic Council, which was renamed in 2019, the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center with the $30 million Rockefeller Foundation gift that she matched.

Earlier in 2022, Ms. Arsht announced an $11 million endowment gift at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, FL. This gift will support a fully paid internship program creating greater and more equal access to hands-on professional experience in arts management and administration.

Arsht is a Trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts where she established the Adrienne Arsht Theater Fund and is Trustee Emerita of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. She is an Honorary Trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Arsht is Executive Vice Chairman of the Atlantic Council and a member of National Advisory Board of the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is former President of the Vice President’s Residence Foundation and a former Board Member of the Blair House Restoration Fund.

At the request of the then Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, Arsht created the campaign Patrons of Diplomacy to establish an endowment for the preservation of furniture and works of art for the State Department. Ms. Arsht is on the Advisory Council of the DC Volunteer Lawyers Project (DCVLP) where she established the Roxana Cannon Arsht Law Fellowship in honor of her mother, which focuses on domestic violence and other urgent family matters. She was the inaugural recipient of the DCVLP Champion of Justice Award for her outstanding contributions to the organization’s work to expand access to justice.

In 2020, Ms. Arsht donated $5 million to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City to fund the Museum’s first ever-paid internship program, which is now named the Adrienne Arsht Interns. With Ms. Arsht’s gift, The Met is now the single largest art museum in the country to offer 100 percent paid internships to nearly 120 undergraduate and graduate interns each year. The transformative donation also supports MetliveArts providing programming focused on themes of resilience.

She is Trustee Emerita of the University of Miami and an honorary board member of Amigos for Kids.

Recently, Arsht received the Ecuador National Order Honorato Vasquez. Grade: Commander. Awarded: for extraordinary achievements in political and diplomatic fields.

She also received the Ohtli Award from the Mexican Government which is the highest honor bestowed by the Mexican Government to individuals or organizations that have worked to empower the Mexican diaspora and helped to "open the path" for new Mexican American and Hispanic generations. Arsht received an honorary doctorate from, her mother’s Alma mater, Goucher College at its 2023 Commencement ceremony.

In 2022, The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked Arsht number 31 on its 2022 America’s biggest donors list and Worth Magazine, named her as one of the Worthy 100 of 2022.

In April 2021, Arsht was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the South Florida Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and was the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Barry University, located in Miami, Florida.

In 2023, Ms. Arsht received an honorary degree from Goucher College, her mother’s Alma mater. In 2019, Ms. Arsht was inducted as an honorary member of the Beta Gamma Sigma society by the business school at Georgetown University. She received an honorary degree from her Alma mater, Mount Holyoke College.

In 2019, Ms. Arsht was awarded The Order of Rio Branco from the Brazilian government for her outstanding dedication to US-Brazil relations and her vision toward Latin America Additionally, Ms. Arsht was awarded the distinguished Order of San Carlos of Colombia, which was given to her by the direction of Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos. In 2013, Ms. Arsht was presented with the prestigious diplomatic honor, Orden de Isabel la Católica (Order of the Cross of Isabella the Catholic) from The King of Spain.

In 2017, she was bestowed the Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence recognizing her visionary and exceptional contributions to cultural and nonprofit institutions nationally. She is the first woman to have ever received this distinction. In 2006, Ms. Arsht received an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in finance.

A 1966 graduate of Villanova Law School, Arsht began her Delaware law career with Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnel. In 1969, she moved to New York City and joined the legal department of Trans World Airlines (TWA).  She then became the first woman in the company’s property, cargo and government relations departments. Arsht moved to Washington, DC in 1979 where she initially worked with a law firm, then started her own title company.

In 1996 she moved to Miami to run her family-owned bank, TotalBank. From 1996 to 2007, Arsht served as Chairman of the Board. Under her leadership, TotalBank grew from four locations to 14 with over $1.4 billion in assets. In 2007, she sold the bank to Banco Popular Español. Arsht was named Chairman Emerita of TotalBank.

In 2008 she became the first, and still is, the only woman to join the Five Million Dollar Roundtable of United Way of Miami-Dade. Arsht’s other notable gifts include to Goucher College, creating the Roxana Cannon Arsht Center for Ethics and Leadership, in honor of her late mother, a Goucher graduate, The University of Miami Arsht Ethics Programs, and a lab at Bascom Palmer Eye Institute of the University of Miami. In Delaware, Arsht funded the creation of a Best Buddies chapter to specifically serve Delaware’s Hispanics and African Americans. The Chronicle of Philanthropy ranked Arsht number 39 on its 2008 America’s biggest donors list.

She is the daughter of the Honorable Roxana Cannon Arsht, the first female judge in the State of Delaware, and S.Samuel Arsht, a prominent Wilmington attorney. Upon graduation from Villanova Law School, Arsht was the 11th woman admitted to the Delaware bar – her mother having been the 5th.  A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Arsht is a member of the Delaware Bar. She was married to the late Myer Feldman (d.2007), former counsel to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.