Florence Malouf; Co-Founded Scholarship Fund

Florence Malouf, co-founder of a foundation that has raised $26 million for college science scholarships nationwide and the organizer of numerous other charities, is dead at 85.

Malouf, who died Saturday at her Holmby Hills home, started the ARCS Foundation (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) in 1958.

Since then, the foundation has contributed $1.8 million to scholarships at Caltech, and $8.5 million for other colleges in Southern California, as part of its national contributions, according to Caltech officials.

“We are deeply sorry to have lost a good friend to the science community,” Dr. Thomas Eberhart, president of Caltech, said Tuesday.

“Florence Malouf, as a response to Sputnik and with the enthusiastic encouragement of then-Caltech President Lee DuBridge, co-founded ARCS as a way for women to provide scholarships, fellowships and recognition to the best university science students. Her concern for students was a lifelong one.”

Sputnik was the first Earth satellite, sent into space by the Soviet Union on Oct. 4, 1957.

Malouf told The Times in 1975 that “when Sputnik went up,” people didn’t respect scientists in the U.S. “And I thought . . . why should they [the Soviets] be first. So I called Dr. DuBridge.”

Malouf also helped found the Fashionettes, the first women’s support group of Queen of Angels/Hollywood Presbyterian hospital; the Americana Associates, which helped redecorate the State Department in Washington; the National Arts Assn., which raises money for inner-city children to take music and art lessons; and the Diadames of the Child Care League.

She was born Florence Nassour, one of eight children in a Lebanese American family in Colorado that owned a department store. She attended Colorado College. The family moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s, settling in Hancock Park.

She and two of her sisters, Vicci and Marion, became involved in charitable work. Together, the three sisters--all of whom married into a single family, the Maloufs--founded 11 organizations and were presidents of 19.

She is survived by two other sisters, Sara Gabriel and Ester Nasser, and many nieces and nephews.

Services for Malouf, who was married to the late Thomas Malouf, will be at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Church of the Recessional at Forest Lawn in Glendale.