St. Louis Character: Missouri Botanical Garden's new leader came to St. Louis for the plants
- ambale
- 38 minutes ago
- 2 min read
By St. Louis Business Journal
Story Highlights
Lúcia Lohmann became president and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden in January 2025.
The Missouri Botanical Garden attracted 1.1 million visitors and reported $72.7 million in operating revenue during 2024.
Lohmann grew up in São Paulo, Brazil, where her mother's love of plants inspired her botanical career.
For Dr. Lúcia Lohmann, the president and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, a love for plants is in her blood.
In São Paulo, where she grew up, she remembers going to plant markets with her mom and visiting her grandfather’s small farm and feeling fascinated by the colors and patterns that she saw in the lush greenery.
Her love for plants turned into a career dedicated to them — Lohmann has a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of São Paulo and master’s and doctoral degrees in ecology, evolution and systematics from the University of Missouri-St. Louis.
It was her love for plants that first brought her to St. Louis — she visited when she was an undergrad to identify plants she’d collected — and it was her love for plants that brought her back for graduate school and now, again, for the role at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
Lohmann started her role as the president and director of the Botanical Garden in January 2025 and now also acts as the George Engelmann Professor of Botany at Washington University in St. Louis. The Missouri Botanical Garden had 1.1 million visitors in 2024 and employs about 460 people locally. It is part of the Zoo-Museum District, and reported operating revenue of $72.7 million that year.
When did your love for plants and botany begin? Growing up in Brazil surrounded by plants, I was always fascinated by them. When I think about myself as a child, most of my childhood is outside in nature and playing in the Atlantic Forest, which is near São Paulo, where I lived. My mom really loved plants. There is a really large plant market in São Paulo and we used to go there often. She was always really interested in plants and teaching me plant names. The plant group I ended up studying, which is the trumpet-creeper family, a very prominent group in Brazil, was my mom’s favorite plant.
