Linda Bean, an heir to the Maine outdoor retailer L.L. Bean who created a company of her own to market other famous Maine products, chiefly lobster rolls and seaside rentals, and who was an outspoken conservative in a state with a tradition of favoring political independents, died on Saturday. She was 82.
An obituary, which did not cite a cause or say where she died, was posted by the funeral home handling her burial.
Ms. Bean was a granddaughter of Leon Leonwood Bean, the purveyor of rubber-soled duck boots and plaid flannel shirts that crossed over from hunters to preppies, fueling the company’s growth into a national catalog behemoth and one of Maine’s largest employers.
As one of about 30 heirs, with a seat on the board of the privately owned company, Ms. Bean used her wealth to support right-wing causes and politicians, including former President Donald J. Trump; to amass paintings and properties associated with the Wyeth art family; and to set out as an entrepreneur in her mid-60s.
In January 2017, the Federal Election Commission said that a contribution of tens of thousands of dollars that Ms. Bean made to a group supporting Mr. Trump, Making America Great Again LLC, exceeded the individual donor limit of $5,000. An anti-Trump group threatened a boycott of L.L. Bean if she did not step down from the board; the company distanced itself from Ms. Bean but did not remove her.
A company Ms. Bean created in 2007, Linda Bean’s Perfect Maine, began with the purchase of a commercial wharf that supplied bait to lobster boats and bought their catch in the picturesque village of Port Clyde, where she had a home. Her ambition was to mass-market lobster under her own name — as Frank Perdue had branded chicken — and to keep Maine lobster from being sent for processing to Canada, which Ms. Bean considered a socialist state.
