Elizabeth "Liza" Lee

Elizabeth Maxwell "Liza" Lee was an American educator and longtime headmistress of The Hockaday School, the private all-girls school in Dallas, Texas. She died peacefully on September 12, 2026, at William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital in Dallas, with her husband of 59 years, William M. Lee, at her side. She was 83.

Born Elizabeth Maxwell in 1943, Lee grew up in New York City and graduated from The Brearley School in 1961. She earned a B.A. in English from Mount Holyoke College and an M.A. in English from Columbia University, then returned to Brearley for twelve years as an English teacher and as Head of the Middle School. In 1980 she moved with her family to Charleston, South Carolina, where she balanced raising three children with substitute teaching at Porter-Gaud School, college counseling at Ashley Hall, and serving as head of College Preparatory School, while also commuting to New York as Acting Head of Brearley's Middle School.

In 1989 she was selected as Headmistress of The Hockaday School, a role she later called her dream job. She led Hockaday from 1990 to 2004 as the first Eugene McDermott Headmistress and the third woman to head the school, increasing the diversity of the student body, modernizing the curriculum, and modeling what colleagues described as caring, principled leadership. The Liza Lee Academic Research Center, opened in 1996, was named in her honor. Believing institutions benefit from a change of leadership about every ten years, she stepped down in 2004 after fourteen years.

Retirement did not suit her. She spent more than a decade as an interim head during leadership transitions: at Porter-Gaud (2005-2007), Trinity Episcopal School in Austin (2007-2008), and The Columbus School for Girls in Ohio (2009-2014), before returning to Hockaday as Interim Headmistress from 2015 to 2017. She also served on the boards of Brearley, Brooks, Lawrenceville, Oldfields, Porter-Gaud, St. Philip's, Sweet Briar College, The Winston School, the Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance, the Eugene McDermott Foundation, and KERA North Texas Public Broadcasting. Southern Methodist University awarded her an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in 2005.

Lee is survived by her husband William M. Lee; her brother John W. Maxwell and his wife Dora Keogh; her children Matthew (Gia Lee), Ted (E.V. Day), and Caroline (Mike Nees); and five grandchildren, Arthur, Lorenzo, George, Ellie, and Henry. Her family thanked UT Southwestern staff for care in her final years and asked that memorial gifts go to the Will and Liza Lee Center for Liver Disease and Transplant Research at UT Southwestern, to The Hockaday School for the Liza and Will Lee Financial Aid Endowment Fund, or to an educational charity of the donor's choice. A memorial was announced for October 3, 2026, at Hockaday.