Princess Diana: Her life and legacy
Princess Diana poses for a portrait in 1990. She would have been 60 years old on July 1, 2021.
Terence Donovan/Camera Press/Redux

Princess Diana: Her life and legacy

Updated 0623 GMT (1423 HKT) August 31, 2022

Princess Diana poses for a portrait in 1990. She would have been 60 years old on July 1, 2021.
Terence Donovan/Camera Press/Redux

Twenty-five years after her untimely death, Princess Diana remains a beloved figure.

Diana married Prince Charles, the heir apparent to the British throne, in 1981. She became an international icon and used her celebrity to raise awareness for a number of causes, from leprosy to domestic violence to mental health. She made headlines in 1987 when she intentionally shook hands with an AIDS patient, working to dispel the myth that HIV/AIDS could be spread through touch.

She was, in the words of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, "the people's princess."

Diana and Prince Charles divorced in 1996, but she was still the target of intense media scrutiny.

On August 31, 1997, Diana and her boyfriend, Dodi Fayed, were killed in a high-speed car crash in Paris, along with their driver, Henri Paul. She was 36 years old.

A French investigation concluded that Paul was legally drunk at the time and responsible for the accident. In 2008, a British coroner's jury found that Diana and Fayed were unlawfully killed because of the actions of Paul and pursuing paparazzi.