Billionaire donates $2 million to Alicia Keys charity

Alicia Keys' Black Ball charity auction received a $2 million donation from pharmaceutical mogul Stewart Rahr.

Rahr joined Keys' auction in aid of her charity Keep A Child Alive, at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom on Thursday (07Nov13), and placed bids on nearly every item.

The billionaire played such a heavy part in the evening that the Fallin' singer eventually invited him to join her on stage to tell the audience about his own rise to riches.

Rahr donated a total of $2 million in less than an hour of bidding, doubling the event's total.

A source tells New York Post gossip column Page Six, "Stewart went wild during the live auction and bid on every lot except one. There was a trip to Milan which started with a reserve price of $8,000. Stewart put his hand straight up and said, 'I'll bid $100,000'. Nobody even bothered bidding against him... He was out of control. He donated so much money that Alicia got him onstage. He was up there for five minutes telling everyone about his rags-to-riches story."

The son of a Brooklyn chemist, Rahr sold his pharmaceutical company Kinray in 2010 for $1.3 billion.