New York — Andrea Bronfman, a noted philanthropist and the wife of Seagram heir Charles Bronfman, died yesterday after being struck by a car in Manhattan.

Mrs. Bronfman, 60, was walking along Fifth Avenue in the affluent Upper East Side when a car slid on the rain-slicked roadway and struck her. No charges have been laid, a New York Police Department spokesman said yesterday.

Known to friends and colleagues as Andy, Mrs. Bronfman was co-chair of the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, which supports causes in the arts, health, education and Jewish life in Canada, the United States and Israel.

She and her husband, whose father Sam founded the Seagram empire, relocated with their family to New York from Montreal in 1998, although the couple spent considerable time in Israel and Florida.

"She was a fabulous wife for Charles; they worked as a great team," said Leo Kolber, a family friend and former Liberal senator.

"She was a very positive, optimistic person. She had a great view on Israel, a great view on the needs of people. She was a real force of nature; I loved her very much and I shall miss her terribly."

Entertainment lawyer and literary agent Michael Levine said that Mrs. Bronfman was one of his dearest friends. "She was a great administrator and a dynamic leader of people, who was very imaginative and very tough-minded," he said.

Historian Irving Abella, co-author of None is Too Many and a former president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, said he first met Mrs. Bronfman in the 1970s when she was a founding member of a group of Jewish women who demonstrated at the Soviet consulate in Montreal to demand the release of Soviet Jews who wanted to move to Israel. He worked with her in the early 1990s on A Coat of Many Colours, an exhibition of Jewish artifacts from Canadian life that toured Israel, New York and Canada. Mr. Abella said the exhibition was significant for Canadian Jewry because "it told the story that nobody knew," that Jews have been in Canada for more than 250 years.

"She did it: She founded it, she thought about it, she created it, she raised the funds for it — a one-woman effort," he said.

Mrs. Bronfman was born in London in 1945, and her parents were ardent Zionists.

She moved to Canada as a young bride with her first husband. After that marriage ended in divorce, she married Mr. Bronfman. The couple remained active in Canadian charitable causes, including the University of Toronto, McGill University and Historica Foundation, which educates young Canadians about their country's history.

With a report from Sandra Martin