Lucky Bitch

IT'S been a while since rambling Rose Porteous basked in the national spotlight, though that is all about to change with the impending wedding of her daughter Johanna Lacson.

Having shunned any public attention in recent years, Rose and Johanna have found themselves in the centre of a media feeding frenzy as weekly magazines made lucrative offers, with up to $50,000 on the table for exclusive rights to cover Johanna's big day.

After spending a decade in battle with her former stepdaughter, the billionairess Gina Rinehart, to successfully defend her inheritance from her late husband, the mining magnate Lang Hancock, clearly Rose does not need the dough.

This time it's Johanna who is in line to receive the cash windfall, and with her mother's blessing.

However, it is publicity that Rose now craves, especially with plans to launch a range of face creams. Not just a pretty face, Rose recently spent five months in New York studying "cosmetic biochemistry".

Rose and Johanna's relationship has not always been quite so peachy, with the pair becoming estranged in 1992 in the days following Hancock's death when Johanna was paid $30,000 for a 60 Minutes interview during which she said she believed her mother deserved to be called a "mail-order bride", a "Filipina floozy" and a "gold digger".

Having fled Australia in 1994 after becoming involved with a convicted heroin dealer and being bashed, Johanna returned to Perth briefly in 2000 and told a Federal Court hearing that she had lied during the 60 Minutes interview. But all that is history now, with Johanna giving birth on December 30 to Rose's first grandson, Alexander. Johanna is due to marry Alexander's father, Dean Fox, in Cairns at the end of July.

Rose, with her husband, Willie Porteous, and beloved poodles Dennis, Lulu and Snoopy, will all be going along for the ride.

These days Rose splits her time between Perth and Melbourne, where she has been spending millions renovating her home in Toorak.

So far she has installed a glass lift to the first floor and three chandeliers made of Swarovski crystals.