Which socialite helped inspire Daisy Buchanan?

Chicago socialite Ginevra King helped inspire Daisy Buchanan.

Fitzgerald met Ginevra King in 1915 while he was a Princeton student and she was a Chicago socialite. Their romance lasted from 1915 to 1917, but her wealthy family discouraged the relationship because Fitzgerald lacked comparable financial prospects. That experience became one of the emotional foundations for his later fiction.

King’s influence on Daisy is especially visible in the character’s social background and her role as an idealized, desirable woman associated with wealth and status. Fitzgerald’s memory of losing her helped shape his recurring literary interest in unattainable love and the American Dream.

King was not the only real-life influence connected with The Great Gatsby. Her husband, William “Bill” Mitchell, is often discussed as one model for Tom Buchanan, while Edith Cummings helped inspire Jordan Baker. Zelda Sayre, Fitzgerald’s wife, is another common answer, but she is not the standard answer to this question about Daisy’s principal socialite inspiration.