From Scandal to Charity: Sydney’s Discreet Socialite’s Unexpected Past

When we talk about the ‘swans of high society’, there are few more enigmatic and elusive than Francesca Duncan.

The 37-year-old charity maven is married to Campbell Duncan, the son of coal mining magnate and Rich Lister Travers Duncan.

Her generosity as a philanthropist is matched only by her extraordinary beauty, as displayed at Olivia Bond‘s birthday party at Neptune’s Grotto on Sunday night.

But the main difference between Francesca and the scions of the Symond and O’Neil families is that we know almost nothing about her history.

Perhaps that is how she prefers it, as there is a particular detail about her past that she may wish to keep hidden.

You see, when we published photos of Francesca rubbing shoulders with a Who’s Who of Sydney’s eastern suburbs, including designer Kate Bond, our inbox was flooded with emails all posing the same tantalising question…

‘You know who she is, right?’

Today, Francesca and her husband may be on the roll of honour at the Sydney Children’s Hospitals Foundation as ‘champion’ donors – a title only handed out to people who donated more than $1million – but she wasn’t always so squeaky clean.

Years before she married into eye-watering wealth and became a benefactress of high-profile charities, the striking brunette was best known for a youthful indiscretion during her school days.

Back in 2004, a 17-year-old Francesca made headlines when she was involved in a minor scandal at Sydney’s most exclusive co-educational school, Barker College.

Then an up-and-coming model, she had posed for two selfies in a Year 12 common room while wearing her distinctive school uniform.

The images were described in those more innocent times as ‘suggestive’ and it was said Francesca was in a ‘compromising position’ for having displayed her bra in her uniform.

The photos, which were not explicit, have long since been scrubbed from the internet but we are reliably informed they were standard Myspace fare from the mid-2000s.

Still, a private school furore always makes for a good story and six months later – after the photos were circulated among students and rival schools, even ending up as far afield as London – journalists from the Sydney Morning Herald came knocking.

When asked about the images, Barker College confirmed a student had been suspended but refused to comment further on what it insisted was ‘an internal issue’.

Francesca, then an HSC student known by her maiden name Francesca Willis, was more forthcoming, taking to her website under the alias ‘Tahitian Temptress’ to address the photos and her suspension.

‘I got suspended from school on Thursday – not so smart but hey when you f*** up you got to deal with the consequences don’t you,’ she wrote on June 20, 2004.

‘Pity this kind of s*** only ever seems to happen to me. 

‘Anyway all I did was take a photo of myself in my school uniform in what the school called “a compromising position”. Big deal I was showing my bra, having a bit of fun.’

Francesca went on to say she was more surprised it took so long for the photos to resurface, writing: ‘It’s not like I even took the photo recently either. 

‘I took it like six months ago but for some reason unknown to me it only seemed to surface in the past two weeks.’

Francesca’s website was promptly closed down later that night and all of its content was removed, according to a report at the time. 

For a 17-year-old in the middle of an international private school scandal, Francesca was about as unbothered as one could be.

Though perhaps she learned a lesson from the kerfuffle, as the once-rebellious teen has blossomed into an extraordinarily discreet woman who shies away from the spotlight, unlike many of her high-society peers.

After dabbling in modelling and filmmaking in her younger years, Francesca buttoned up after tying the knot with husband Campbell.

Her husband is the son of mining magnate Travers Duncan and his wife Mary-Anne Buchanan, and his sister is lawyer and business executive Andromeda Neale.

Travers, who was a director of ASX-listed White Energy, died aged 89 in May 2022, leaving his children a $748million fortune.

Francesca and Campbell have kept out of the headlines for much of their marriage, only making a splash when they bought a $15.8million house in Mosman in 2018.

She has remained so steadfastly under the radar that she is only pictured these days when she attends elite charity events such as the Gold Dinner, for which she served as a committee member for a year.

The fact that we spied her in the wild at Olivia Bond’s 40th birthday over the weekend was quite a rare feat. You can read all the inside gossip about that event here.