Adèle Naudé was born Aletta Adèle Wollheim on 14 August 1910. Her parents were Henri Jacques Guilaume da Fonseca Wollheim (born 1873) and Maria Johanna Justina Watney. Her siblings were Oscar David da Fonseca Wollheim, a liberal political and social welfare activist, William John Watney Wollheim, a businessman, and Louis Botha Wollheim, a businessman. Having been born in the Bushveld, Adèle Naudé arrived in Cape Town at the age of three months and spent her girlhood in a government house on the Groote Schuur estate in Cape Town of which her father was the manager for twenty years. Her memories of her youth are recorded in her book Rondebosch and Round About (David Phillip, Claremont, 1973). She was educated at Rustenberg Girls’ High School and attained a BA degree at the University of Cape Town. Adèle Naudé was a poet, having published four collections, and a writer, having published six other works of non-fiction. Some of her non-fiction works reflect wide-ranging historical research into the lives and times of her own ancestors and forebears, particularly those of the Da Fonseca Wollheim, Hopley, Watney, Duckitt, Barry and Blanckenberg families. In this regard it may be noted that Adèle Naudé’s paternal grandfather, Oscar David da Fonseca Wollheim, married Maria Aletta “Mimi” Hopley, who was a daughter of William Musgrove Hopley. The lives of the Hopley family are a key theme in her book Cape Album (Howard Timmins Publishers, Cape Town, 1979), which also gives an overall picture of life in Cape Town and surroundings in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Adèle Naudé also edited the women’s pages of several journals such as Naweek and Spotlight, reviewed many books and did broadcasting. She served as Secretary of South African P E N Centre (Cape Town). Adèle Naudé had an interest in social concerns and was involved in the work of the Cape Flats Distress Association. She was also interested in gardening and advised on landscaping. Her interests included music and the arts and she served on the Council of the Friends of the South African National Gallery. Adèle Naudé was married to D F Hugo Naudé, a well-known Cape Town architect (1905-1967) and nephew of the artist (Pieter) Hugo Naudé (1869-1941). One of Adèle Naudé’s books relates to the life and work of the artist. They had one daughter, Adèle-Marie Naudé dos Santos, who became a professor of Architecture at Havard University and dean of MIT School of Architecture. Adèle Naudé died in 1981.