Princess Tenagnework Haile Selassie

Tenagnework Haile Selassie was born on the twelfth of January 1912 at Harar in the eastern Ethiopian highlands, the eldest daughter of Ras Tafari Makonnen — the future Emperor Haile Selassie I — and Woizero Menen Asfaw (placed in this archive), the future Empress Menen. She was raised partly at the Harari court of her father and partly at the imperial palace at Addis Ababa.

She received the classical Ge'ez and Amharic literary education of the Solomonic imperial princesses at the imperial palace school at Addis Ababa — and was instructed in French and English under the French and Swiss tutors brought by her father for the children of the imperial house.

She was married in March 1924 at Addis Ababa to Dejazmach Desta Damtew of the Shewan nobility — and bore six children at the Damtew household before the Italian invasion of 1935.

She followed her father into exile at Bath, England in May 1936 at the Italian invasion of Ethiopia — and resided at Fairfield House in Bath through the five years of the Italian occupation. Her husband Desta Damtew was killed at the Battle of Lake Shala in February 1937 by the Italian Fascist forces.

She returned with the imperial party at the restoration of the Ethiopian Empire in May 1941 — and was married in February 1944 to Ras Andargachew Messai of the Gojjami nobility, who became Viceroy of Eritrea in 1952.

She served as the principal patron of Ethiopian women's institutions across the post-restoration period — including the Empress Menen School and the Ethiopian Women's Welfare Association.

She was placed under house arrest by the Derg military council at the deposition of Haile Selassie I in September 1974 — and held under detention for fourteen years at the prison wing of the Akaki state palace at Addis Ababa.

She was released in 1989 and went into exile at London in 1990.

She died at Addis Ababa on the sixth of April 2003 of complications of a long illness, at ninety-one.

She is honored here as the eldest daughter of the Solomonic imperial line.