In 1987, 'Funny Girl' Barbra Streisand tried to sell her 17,000-sq-ft Malibu estate but failed; six years later, she gave away the $15 million property for environmental research

Six years. That's how long Barbra Streisand tried and failed to sell her sprawling Ramirez Canyon property before she gave up on finding a buyer entirely, and gave the whole thing away instead. The estate wasn't a modest weekend house. It sprawled across Malibu's hills with five separate residences, roughly 17,000 square feet of living space in total, gardens shaped over years, and interiors that read like a private museum of Art Deco design.

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It had been listed since 1987, and the asking price told its own story of a slow, stubborn market: $18 million at first, dropping eventually to $11.5 million with still no takers. By the summer of 1993, Streisand had quietly stopped trying to sell. Instead, she began talking with the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy about a different kind of ending for the property, one that didn't involve a for-sale sign at all.

A Gift, Not a Sale

Those conversations ran for roughly three months before anything became public. Then, in November 1993, the arrangement was announced: Streisand would hand the entire estate over to the conservancy. State appraisers put its value at $15 million.

Joseph T. Edmiston, who ran the conservancy at the time, didn't mince words about what that meant. It was, he said, the single most valuable property ever donated to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area up to that point, bigger, by a wide margin, than anything the organization had received before.

Ownership was set to change hands on December 1, 1993.

Not Just Land, A Working Institution

Here's where the story gets more interesting than a simple land gift. The conservancy wasn't planning to fence off the property and leave it be. It had bigger ambitions: turning the estate into something called the Streisand Center for Conservancy Studies, a research complex built around the existing buildings rather than in spite of them.

The vision included a scholars-in-residence setup, drawing in academics and researchers to study conservation and land use. Edmiston talked about hosting visiting fellows on-site. There was even a conference already penciled in for February — its focus, fittingly, would be greenways: old rail lines, abandoned rights-of-way, and other overlooked corridors that cities might one day fold into their park systems.

Public access was part of the plan too, at least in part. Given the estate's location, planners saw a natural link to the hiking trails already threading through the Santa Monica Mountains.

A House With History Already Attached

This wasn't a piece of anonymous real estate suddenly thrust into the spotlight. The property had already made headlines once before, in 1986, when Streisand held a benefit concert there for Democratic Senate candidates, her first public performance in six years, taped for cable television.

The concert alone brought in about $1.5 million for the candidates it supported. Once the broader charitable proceeds were counted, the televised event generated something in the neighborhood of $7 million for causes Streisand backed.

Then there was the design pedigree. One of the five houses had appeared in Architectural Digest just months before the donation, showcasing a deep, carefully curated collection of Art Deco furniture and objects. Much of that collection was headed for a New York auction the following spring — separate from the land deal entirely.

Saving the Buildings, Not Just the Views

A lot of conservation land gifts involve tearing structures down, or letting them fall apart naturally. This one was different, and deliberately so.

Edmiston made clear that the architecture itself was part of the appeal. The grounds carried what he described as an English country-estate feel, mixed in with a genuine variety of building styles. Two of the houses leaned rustic — one had actually started life as a barn before extensive remodeling. A separate villa took its cues from Mediterranean design and included a screening room stretching close to 2,000 square feet.

Conservancy officials weren't ready to let the furnishings go either. They hoped Streisand might donate at least a portion of her Art Deco pieces alongside the buildings. Failing that, they were prepared to simply buy select items outright rather than see the collection scattered at auction with nothing left behind.

Where This Ranks in Conservancy History

Edmiston framed the gift against two earlier moments that had shaped the conservancy's history. "There have been three major donations in the history of the Santa Monica Mountains," he said at the time.

The first dated back to 1944: the 186-acre Will Rogers estate, valued at $550,000 when it entered California's state park system. The second came from actor Leo Carrillo, a 10-acre stretch of oceanfront property valued at $300,000.

Streisand's donation dwarfed both, at least in dollar terms, a reflection not just of Malibu real estate inflation over the decades, but of how much larger and more developed the property itself was.

Founded in 1981, the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy had by 1993 assembled roughly 20,000 acres through acquisitions large and small. The Ramirez Canyon gift didn't just add acreage to that total. It handed the organization a fully built environment, houses, gardens, a screening room, decades of history, and, with it, a chance to turn a celebrity retreat into something built for public and scientific use instead.