Henry Luce III, the son of a founder of Time magazine who joined the newsweekly as a Washington correspondent in 1951, rose to publisher in 1969 and held other prominent positions in Time Inc.'s empire, has died. He was 80.

Luce died last Wednesday of undetermined causes at his summer home on Fishers Island, N.Y., said Terry Lautz, vice president of the Henry Luce Foundation, which Luce ran from 1958 to 2002.

The $28 million Henry Luce Pavilion Complex, which opened in May 2001 at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, was financed in part by a grant from the foundation. The pavilion and gallery are named for Luce's father, publishing magnate Henry R. Luce.

Luce's stepson, Ricky Cassiday, said Luce traveled to Hawai'i often, especially to visit his stepmother, Clare Boothe Luce, who lived in Kahala for the last 14 years of her life.

"His father loved (Hawai'i) and brought him here often," Cassiday said. "(Luce) liked the way the cultures mixed, that everybody got along."

During his 45-year media career, Luce also served as Time magazine's London bureau chief in the mid-1960s and as publisher of Fortune magazine. He was a longtime board member of Time Inc. and later Time Warner.

The younger Luce, known as "Hank," was born April 28, 1925, in New York City. Six weeks after his parents divorced in 1935, his father married Clare Boothe Brokaw, a widow and playwright who became a legislator, ambassador and war correspondent for Life.

In addition to his wife, Leila Eliott Burton Hadley, Luce is survived by a daughter, Lila Frances of Kenya; a son, Henry Christopher of New York; and his only sibling, Peter Paul Luce, of Boulder, Colo.