In a story about Liesel Pritzker Simmons donating hundreds of millions to good causes all over the world, Forbes magazine fills in the blanks about the Hyatt Hotel heir's personal life, too.

She taught yoga to heroin addicts in a rehabilitation program in India, tapped in data-entry information for a micro-finance office in Tanzania and took cooking classes in New York. And she got married to a notable name in his own right.

Her husband is Ian Simmons, 38, whom Forbes describes as “a blue-blooded heir to the family that built locks on the Erie Canal, co-founded department-store chain Montgomery Ward and helped take insurance broker Marsh & McLennan public.”

Ms. Simmons, as you recall, was a child actress who starred with Harrison Ford in “Air Force One” in 1997 when she was 11. Her stage name was Liesel Matthews, a nod to her younger brother, Matthew Pritzker. (Side note: Liesel was named after the "Sound of Music" character Liesel von Trapp.)

In 2002, she filed suit against her father, the late Robert Pritzker and her extended family (including cousin Penny Pritzker), claiming she wasn't included in the family fortune the way other first cousins were. Her brother later would join the suit that spent years in the courts and led in part to the breakup of the family's private ownership of several companies, including Marmon Holdings and Hyatt Hotels, all to generate cash for the unhappy cousins. She took a $500 million payout and left the country to find herself.

By 2008, Forbes says, she had returned the states, bagged the acting career and started focusing on philanthropy. She put $50 million into the Blue Haven Initiative, a foundation investing in "all types of capital to change the world!," her Twitter account says. Her mother, Irene, runs the organization.

Ms. Simmons, 29, and her husband have a net worth of $600 million, according to Forbes.

Among other philanthropic ventures, they have invested $150,000 in a startup that dries human fecal sludge and turns it into a burnable fuel. Forbes' story opens with Ms. Simmons in Ghana overseeing the icky process. The message is: The Pritzker heir may have millions, but she's not your average trust-fund baby.