 The success of the business meant that the Ashleys could afford a yacht, a private plane, the French Château de Remaisnil in Picardy, a town-house in Brussels, and the villa "Contenta" in Lyford Cay, New Providence, Bahamas, later purchased for $8.5 million by T. J. Maloney.In 1985, just after her 60th birthday, Laura Ashley fell down the stairs of her daughter's home in the West Midlands and was taken to hospital in Coventry, where she died ten days later of a brain haemorrhage.She is buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist, in Carno, Wales.