When Honey Sherman asked to meet Aubrey Dan, son of her billionaire husband’s bitter rival, Leslie Dan, she arrived in his boardroom with a ball cap on, ready to pitch a project that would bring them together.

It was in the early 2000s. Their families had been business rivals since “the heydays of the ’80s,” Aubrey said. But when Honey arrived for lunch at his office for the midday meeting, she appealed to their common ground.

“We both come from the drug industry,” Aubrey said.

The idea Honey had was a Jewish-focused community service for those struggling with addiction. And when she spoke, Aubrey remembered, she spoke warmly. So the project began, and the unlikely pair “just clicked.”

Barry and Honey Sherman were found dead in their North York home on Dec. 15. Police call their deaths “suspicious.” He was 75, she was 70.

Tales of Barry’s pharmaceutical empire as the founder of Apotex often position his wife as a secondary character. But Honey was involved in his success from the early days.

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After connecting with Aubrey, the pair’s professional relationship gave way to a personal one that drew her husband into the mix.

By the end of the Shermans’ lives, the two men and former rivals would be sending emails back and forth about the ideal formulations to put medical marijuana into a pill.

Friends describe Honey as a powerhouse in her own right: a strategic voice on charity boards, straight to the point about her opinions, practical, and modest despite her affluence.

“She was the ultimate connector,” said Marilyn Sinclair, Honey’s vice-chair at the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre.

Bernie Farber, who worked with Honey on several projects over the years, said she probably had “the best Rolodex in the country.”

The couple’s story began simply, as Barry Sherman wrote in an unpublished memoir: “In August 1970, I met Honey Reich.”

She was 23 years old to his 28. She was newly graduated from the University of Toronto with an arts degree from New College and an education degree from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. She was in the Class of ’66 at William Lyon Mackenzie Collegiate Institute in Toronto.

Honey was the daughter of Holocaust survivors, born in a displaced persons camp in Austria and raised in poverty. Those facts would permeate her life’s work.

“She was a woman grounded from where she came from,” Farber said. “Those of us who grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust, we really understood what pain was all about, and we understood the need to do whatever we could to change the world.

“And Honey, honestly, she took that on with gusto.”

No matter what you asked of her, Farber said — especially if there was something that needed to be done in the Jewish community or for charity — Honey would immediately jump on board.

“I’m not sure ‘no’ (was) actually in her vocabulary,” he said. “And she had a hundred different ways to approach an issue.”

Honey and Barry were married by a judge at the York County Courthouse just one year after they met. The date was July 2, 1971.

They were yin and yang; the introvert and the extrovert. High school yearbooks show Honey, year after year, smiling in the centre of class photos.

Thousands of mourners paid tribute to a billionaire philanthropist couple who died under suspicious circumstances last week. The memorial was held at a convention centre in Mississauga, Ont.

Honey’s sister Mary said Honey would always pick out Barry’s clothes, and friends said she’d often help him choose what he ate.

The couple’s son, Jonathon, called them “a lock and a key” at their funeral last Thursday: each was “pretty useless” on their own, but together they unlocked the whole world for each other, their kids and the people around them.

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Sinclair said she’d sometimes watch him watch her.

“He would follow her with his eyes, around the room, with this smile on his face,” Sinclair said.

Barry was withdrawn, but if Honey didn’t know someone, she’d go up to them and, in her classic no-nonsense style, start asking questions.

“ ‘Hi! I’m Honey! Who are you? Why are you here? How do I know you? How should I know you?’ ” Sinclair said, her impression perky, before laughing.

The year after Barry and Honey got married, a letter from his aunt Rae Katz — addressed to a distant cousin — bubbled over with good news. The letter was shared with the Star by Sue Katz, the letter’s recipient and a professor at Rogers State University in Oklahoma.

“Barry’s wife, Honey, is pregnant. The family, thank God, is growing,” Rae wrote in loopy script on the now-yellowing paper. But there wouldn’t be a Sherman baby for a while after that 1972 letter.

A feature in Toronto Life in 2008 reported that Honey had multiple miscarriages. Three of her four children, with the exception of Lauren in 1975, were born via surrogacy: Jonathon in 1983, Alexandra in 1986 and Kaelen in 1990.

“Mom, I love you,” Jonathon said at the funeral. His voice broke over thie microphone while delivering the eulogy, where he said his mother always had everything taken care of.

Senator Linda Frum, who also spoke at the funeral, said she wasn’t sure if Honey was ever in “good health” while she knew her. Honey dealt with several ailments, but Frum noted that she never complained about them. Once, the two women took a plane trip together. Frum was scared of flying.

“As the airplane started to speed towards lift off, silently . . . she would stretch out her hand for me to hold,” Frum said. “I preserve this image of Honey in my mind because it is always how I will think of her.”

After a surgery, Honey had mobility issues, Sinclair said. Nevertheless, she refused to accept a reserved parking spot.

“We have elderly people here who walk. We have Holocaust survivors who have to walk,” Sinclair recalled Honey arguing. “I’ll park at the back like everybody else!”

Sharing stories about Honey, friends also detailed a thoughtful woman who lived below her means.

When they’d have catered meetings, Honey would arrive with Styrofoam containers, fill them up and race around distributing them to security guards. She’d urge those who helped not to forget anyone.

She’d shun expensive restaurants for meetings over a bagel or omelettes at United Bakers in Lawrence Plaza. She’d rent “some little putt-putt” car when the couple went down to Florida, Sinclair said. Honey would wave it off if prodded, saying she’d asked for the cheapest.

In the days before she died, Honey was in touch with many of her friends, chatting about Kaelen’s upcoming wedding and the new baby in the family. She sent a last congratulatory email to Aubrey on Dec. 12, about a donation he’d made.

She spoke to Sinclair that day to confirm dinner plans. Those plans never came to fruition.

But if a passerby ever saw her at dinner, Farber said, you’d hardly realize who was in front of you.

“If you were to meet her in a restaurant, or just by the by, you would never know she came from so much money — that she was Honey Sherman,” he said. “She was as grounded as anybody I ever knew, and that makes the loss even more tragic.

“She’s going to be horribly missed.”