As seen in this listing photo, this two-bedroom floor-through that appears to belong to the socialite Heather Kerzner is a real life Barbie Dream penthouse.
Photo: Compass
The penthouse at 145 East 76th Street is, in many ways, quite over the top. The living room is Wedgwood blue and accented with pink-sand hourglasses, navy-velvet sectionals, and a veiny marble fireplace. The primary suite has large-format floral wallpaper and raspberry-lacquered closets with paneled mirrors. The lemon-tree wallpaper in the dining room is custom, and the kaleidoscopic painting is by Damien Hirst. It is a lot — a 2,371-square-foot Barbie Dream floor-through with a wraparound terrace — and it’s new to the market for $7.885 million.
City records suggest the apartment belongs to Heather Kerzner, the socialite and ex-wife of Sol Kerzner, the late billionaire hotelier and casino mogul. The couple shared an apparent taste for excess: Sol’s expansion of his infamous Sun City resort in South Africa was described by the New York Times as “the most audacious and most deafeningly hyped theme resort in the Southern hemisphere.” A Dubai resort, meanwhile, had a glass tank with a 14-foot whale shark in the lobby, and trained monkeys reportedly handed out roses at the launch of a Moroccan beach-and-golf escape.
All of which makes 145 East 76th feel somewhat tame — but not too tame. The listing calls the Lenox Hill spread a “jewel box” to “the nth degree,” and the word custom appears in nearly every other sentence. (Some examples: a “custom three-piece bathroom,” “custom lacquer cabinetry,” “custom awnings,” “a custom BlueStar range,” “custom mosaic floor and wall tiles by Studium.” We could go on.)
Kerzner, a former model (and “latter-day Marie Antoinette,” per the London Standard), has a colorful paper trail of her own. Her engagement to James Henderson, the CEO of the British public-relations firm Bell Pottinger, more or less collapsed in 2017 alongside the implosion of his firm, infamous for laundering the reputations of accused killers and dictators and, in the end, more or less stoking a race war in South Africa. Back in New York, per the Daily Mail, Kerzner lost $500,000 worth of art and furniture, including a pair of Damien Hirst Spot paintings, when her belongings were seized over unpaid storage fees in 2018 and sold off in a fire sale for around $1,600. These days, Kerzner has been dating Michael Bolton, who in 2023 told People their relationship was “very natural.”
As for the penthouse, it comes with a bonus property: a 410-square-foot studio, which can be turned into a home gym or office, according to the listing. Or, perhaps, a place to put a tank filled with whale-shark pups.
The bubblegum-pink knobs on the BlueStar stainless-steel range and chandelier, as seen in this listing photo, are indeed Barbiecore.
Photo: Compass
Kerzner’s penthouse leans into the pink theme in the primary bedroom and hallway, as seen in this listing photo.
Photo: Compass