Nicholas Edmund Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, DL (born 3 June 1979), also known as Nick Ashley-Cooper or Nick Shaftesbury, is an English peer, landowner and philanthropist. He succeeded his brother as Earl of Shaftesbury in 2005. He also holds the subsidiary titles Baron Ashley and Baron Cooper. In 2019 he was appointed as a Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Dorset. Early life Nicholas Ashley-Cooper was born on 3 June 1979, in London, the younger son of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury (1938–2004), and his Swedish wife Christina Eva Montan (born c. 1940), the daughter of Nils Montan, a former Swedish Ambassador to Germany. His godfathers were Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, and Simon Elliot, later brother-in-law of Charles, Prince of Wales. He had an elder brother, Anthony Nils Christian Ashley-Cooper (1977–2005), who in 2004 became 11th Earl of Shaftesbury, and also an elder half-brother and half-sister from Lady Shaftesbury's first marriage. His father, the 10th Earl, was murdered in November 2004 by the brother of his third wife, Jamila, and was succeeded by his elder son. Jamila is currently serving a twenty-year prison sentence as an accomplice to the murder. Six months later, on 15 May 2005, the 11th Earl died of a heart attack in Manhattan, New York, while visiting his younger brother, and Ashley-Cooper thus unexpectedly succeeded him in the earldom. The Daily Telegraph described the new Earl as "a tattooed young raver". He then relocated to his family home from New York City and assumed the responsibilities of the earldom. Career Before inheriting the family estates, Shaftesbury worked in television and music. He began as a strategic analyst with Discovery Networks Europe, a television network, then worked on Digital Strategy and Business Development for Terra Firma Capital Partners, after its acquisition of the music company EMI Group. He was then part of a team that raised over $5 million for Saatchi Online, an online forum and art gallery, and finally was the chief operating officer of GoMix, an interactive music software platform company. Marriage and children On 11 September 2010, in Dorset, Shaftesbury married Dinah Streifeneder (born 12 September 1980 in Munich), the daughter of Dr Fritz Streifeneder, a retired German orthopaedic surgeon, and Renata Leander-Streifeneder, an Argentinian physiotherapist. She spent her early life in Rome, Italy. The Countess of Shaftesbury is a veterinary surgeon by profession and has taken the lead in the