“I Didn’t Need a Husband”: Inside Jane Goodall’s Two Remarkable Marriages, Her Final Heartbreak, and the Secret That Died With Her

Jane Goodall gained acclaim for her pioneering work and fell in love twice along the way.

The renowned conservationist and animal welfare advocate, whose death at 91 years old was confirmed on Oct. 1, became the world’s foremost expert on chimpanzees after spending decades studying them in the wild in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park.

While her groundbreaking research made her a global icon, both of her husbands — photographer Baron Hugo van Lawick and Tanzanian parks director Derek Bryceson — played meaningful roles in her life and career.

In July 2020, she reflected on her two marriages to PEOPLE, explaining that although they both ended, she was grateful for their influence on her work.

“If I hadn’t married [Bryceson], there wouldn’t be a Gombe today. If Hugo hadn’t come along, the chimp story [probably] would have ended,” she said, before going on to explain why she “didn’t want” to marry for a third time after her second husband died in 1980.

“I didn’t meet the right person, I suppose, or potentially the right person,” she said. “I had lots of men friends, many. I had lots of women friends too. My life was complete. I didn’t need a husband.”

Here’s a look back at Jane Goodall’s marriages to her two husbands, Baron Hugo van Lawick and Derek Bryceson.

Baron Hugo van Lawick

As Goodall told PEOPLE in July 2020, she met her first husband, Dutch photographer and filmmaker van Lawick, in 1962 when he came to photograph her for National Geographic in what is now Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania.

During a May 2025 appearance on Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast, Goodall opened up more about their meeting, noting that she was hesitant for him to come to Africa for the job.

“They wanted to make a film and they wanted good photographs, so they sent Hugo van Lawick and I really didn’t want him to come,” she said. “I hadn’t met him because I just wanted to be there with the chimps, you know. I didn’t want anybody and I was afraid they’d be scared of him and, you know, all my hard work would be undone.”

However, Goodall said she soon realized that van Lawick “loved animals” and “always wanted to be out there with them,” using photography as a “route” to explore his passion.

“We got on fine,” Goodall added, going on to say that van Lawick “really helped to share the knowledge that chimpanzees really are like us.”

The pair got married in 1964 and welcomed one child, son Hugo Eric Louis, before they split in 1974. The conservationist shared with Cooper that their relationship “ended gradually,” given that National Geographic stopped sponsoring his visits to Gombe in Tanzania, where Goodall was still working.

“He had to go on with his career and he got some money to do films on the Serengeti, and I couldn’t leave Gombe,” she recalled. “I had to stay … I couldn’t leave Gombe, and so it slowly drifted apart. And it was sad.”

Reflecting on their split, Goodall said she felt as though they “did the right thing” by going their separate ways, noting that they “kind of had to do it.”

“I definitely wish we could have carried on with that marriage because it was a good one,” she continued.

Derek Bryceson

In 1972, Goodall joined a group to lobby for the creation of a national park in Tanzania’s Gombe region. At the time, Goodall told PEOPLE she was “scared” to meet the parks director, Bryceson, because she had heard he was “mean and unsympathetic.”

However, in a twist of fate, Bryceson and Goodall divorced their spouses and married in 1975.

Though Bryceson, a former member of Tanzania’s National Assembly, didn’t remember their first encounter, he recalled the time Goodall came to parliament to show her film on chimpanzees. “She made a very definite impression,” he told PEOPLE.

The pair shared with PEOPLE how they spent their time together, with Goodall saying they enjoyed “dining alone.” Bryceson added that an “ideal life” would be to “stay all year at Gombe, by the clear lake — far away from the city.”

Five years after they wed, Goodall was left widowed when Bryceson died in 1980. “He got this horrible cancer,” she told PEOPLE. “That was the end.”