On a 1962 trip to India, Jacqueline Kennedy visited one of the few women in the world who might be considered her peer in the pantheon of legendary beauties: Gayatri Devi, who died July 29 at age 90. Like Kennedy, Devi entered public life through marriage, when she became the third wife of the maharaja of Jaipur in 1940. But unlike the First Lady, Devi never left it. Willowy and doe-eyed, she was a thoroughly modern princess who served three terms in Parliament, crusaded for girls' education and adapted her sense of noblesse oblige to India's changing realities.
Devi, known to...
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