Louise Dieterle Nippert, the Cincinnati arts patron credited with rescuing the city’s symphony from financial disaster two-and-a-half years ago, died Monday at age 100, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra leaders were mulling a drastic downsizing when Ms. Nippert donated $85-million in December 2009, a gift that primarily supported the symphony but also aided the city’s ballet and opera companies.

It was the crowning gift of decades of Cincinnati-focused philanthropy in which Ms. Nippert and her late husband, attorney and Procter & Gamble heir Louis Nippert, contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to arts, educational, and other institutions.

A minority owner of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, Ms. Nippert also gave $100-million in 2009 to endow programs by the Greenacres Foundation, the family estate she and her husband converted into a cultural and environmental-education center.