Annabella is a Life Architect working at the intersection of home, inner wisdom, and lived experience. For more than 25 years, she has been entrusted with redesigning luxury homes worth over £350 million; every project has been delivered on time and on budget. She founded A Living Concept in 2004 and, in 2008, brought construction in-house, becoming a rare figure in London who both designs and builds luxury homes under one signature. By 30 she had turned down partnerships at two of London’s most prestigious developers to build something of her own. But her most significant transformation was not a property. An accident at nineteen left her body held together by metal plates and screws, and for two decades she carried weight no one could see. In 2018, she released it. Today she is a Rapid Transformational Therapist, creator of H.E.A.R.T.™ and DomusAnima™, and bestselling author of Find Your Heart.
Find, feel and follow your heart, wake up each day with purpose and make the journey the reward.
You became your own main contractor rather than depend on ones who could fail you. What did that decision teach you about leadership?
As a designer and PM I kept watching my work compromised by others. Contractors went bankrupt mid-project, left me exposed and damaged the reputation I had spent years building. I was being held accountable for failures that were not mine, while my clients looked to me to make things right. So I made a decision everyone called reckless. Rather than depend on contractors who could collapse and take my name down with them, I became the main contractor myself. I did it to honour my obligation to my clients, no matter what. When the system I needed did not exist, I created one, where design and delivery sit under one roof and one accountability. That is what leadership as a woman has taught me. Not bending yourself to fit a broken structure, but building your own. I no longer ask for a seat at the table. I built it.
What impact are you proudest of — in the homes you’ve built, and beyond?
Over more than 25 years I have been entrusted with redesigning luxury homes worth over £350M, every project delivered on time and on budget. But my real impact is the system I built to earn that trust. By bringing design and construction under one signature, I gave clients the one thing the luxury market badly needed: certainty. Complete accountability, with nowhere for problems to hide, and a model that cuts waste, protects quality, and lets me source responsibly and treat workers fairly. I proved a woman could lead major luxury projects, and that integration beats fragmentation. Beyond the build, I help women align not only their spaces but their identity, purpose, and wellbeing, through my H.E.A.R.T. framework and DomusAnima™. And in writing Find Your Heart, I gave others a path through their own turning points. I do not just change what people live in. I change how they live.
What’s the achievement that means most to you?
My biggest achievement has been living through two awakenings. The first time, I woke from a coma after a near-death accident at nineteen that took two people I loved and left my body held together by metal plates and screws. I survived, but for the next twenty-five years I lived in coping mode, carrying a grief and a weight no one around me could see, pouring everything into my work. The second awakening came in 2018, when I finally faced what I had been holding for a quarter of a century and let it go. That was the harder one, and the one that set me free. I turned that healing into my H.E.A.R.T.™ framework, my coaching, and my book Find Your Heart, so others could move from loss to purpose too. I am still here, and everything I now build, I build in their memory.
What makes your approach to leadership distinct?
What makes my work unique is that I refuse to separate the things most people keep apart. I design and build luxury homes under one signature, vision and delivery in one pair of hands. But the deeper distinction is that I work with the home people live in and the life they live within it. My own turning point taught me this. After a near-death experience, I carried invisible weight for twenty-five years, and when I finally released it, I understood that a beautiful space means little if the person inside it is not aligned. So I built two methods that work as one: A.C.E.™ turns properties into dream homes, and H.E.A.R.T.™ transforms the person living in them, meeting at DomusAnima™, “where the soul of your home meets the home of the soul”. I am not shaping spaces. I am an architect of lives.
What advice would you give future women leaders?
Find your heart, feel your heart, follow your heart. Do what you are truly passionate about, because that is where your real power lives. And if something feels off, it most probably is. I spent too long ignoring that feeling. When you finally listen to it, that is the moment you have to dare: to cause the change, and then to make it permanent rather than slipping back into what was comfortable. Real transformation is not a single brave moment, it is the courage to make the new way your way. Build what is yours rather than waiting for permission. Help whenever you can help, because leadership that does not lift others is just ambition. Do all of this, and you will never work a day in your life, because the work will no longer feel like work. It will feel like the thing you were always meant to do.
