Diana Frances Spencer was born in 1961 at Park House on the Sandringham estate, the youngest daughter of a Norfolk aristocratic family. At eighteen she was working as a kindergarten assistant in London when her relationship with Prince Charles became public. Their wedding on July 29, 1981, was watched on television by 750 million people — the largest television audience of any event to that date. She bore Prince William in 1982 and Prince Harry in 1984. Her work on landmines, AIDS — at a time when the disease was severely stigmatised — and homelessness redefined what a modern royal could be. Her marriage publicly disintegrated; the couple separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. She died in the early hours of August 31, 1997, in a car crash in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel in Paris, at thirty-six. The flowers left at Kensington Palace formed a sea five feet deep; the funeral on September 6 was watched by 2.5 billion people.
All Figures
Princess of Wales · Humanitarian Campaigner
Princess Diana
1,961 CE – 1,997 CE
The Norfolk-born nursery teacher who married the heir to the British throne at twenty, redefined modern royalty around accessibility and compassion — and whose death at thirty-six unleashed an unprecedented global outpouring of grief.
Lifetime
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