Irene Emma Elisabeth (August 5, 1939) is the second child and daughter of Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and Prince Bernhard.
Because of the invasion of the Netherlands by Nazi Germany during World War II the Dutch royal family first fled to the United Kingdom. Irene was not yet a year old when the family was forced to leave the Netherlands; she was christened in the Chapel-Royal of Buckingham Palace in London, with the wife of King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, being one of her godparents.
Princess Irene studied at the University of Utrecht, then went to Madrid to learn the Spanish language and became proficient enough to become an official interpreter. While studying Spanish in Madrid, she met then Prince Carlos Hugo of Bourbon-Parma, the eldest son of Carlist claimant to the Spanish throne, Xavier, Duke of Parma and Head of the House of Bourbon-Parma. In the summer of 1963, she secretly converted from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism, and the couple was married Parma in a Catholic ceremony in Rome in 1964, despite the efforts of Queen Juliana to stop the marriage. The couple had four children: Carlos, Margarita, Jaime and Carolina. Irene and Carlos Hugo divorced in 1981, and since then, Irene has espoused left-wing causes, including anti-nuclear campaigns, and has developed a pantheistic philosophy about the relationship between man and nature. She purchased a farm near Nieu-Bethesda in South Africa in 1999, and turned it into a sanctuary. In 2001, she helped establish the NatuurCollege in the Netherlands. She is also the founder of NatureWise, an organization that brings elementary school children in the Netherlands directly in touch with nature.
Having been married to the Duke of Parma, she is the only one of her sisters whose husband was of royal status.