biography about princess diana

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Biography of Diana, Princess of Wales

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Childhood and Schooling

Marriage to prince charles, divorce and life after.

• B.A., Mundelein College
• M.Div., Meadville/Lombard Theological School

Princess Diana (born Diana Frances Spencer; July 1, 1961–August 31, 1997) was the consort of Charles, Prince of Wales. She was the mother of Prince William, currently in line for the throne after his father, Diane's former husband, and of Prince Harry. Diana was also known for her charity work and her fashion image.

Fast Facts: Diana, Princess of Wales

• Known For: Diana became a member of the British royal family when she married Charles, Prince of Wales, in 1981.
• Also Known As: Diana Frances Spencer, Lady Di, Princess Diana
• Born: July 1, 1961 in Sandringham, England
• Parents: John Spencer and Frances Spencer
• Died: August 31, 1997 in Paris, France
• Spouse: Charles, Prince of Wales (m. 1981–1996)
• Children: Prince William (William Arthur Philip Louis), Prince Harry (Henry Charles Albert David)

Diana Frances Spencer was born on July 1, 1961, in Sandringham, England. Although she was a member of the British aristocracy, she was technically a commoner, not a royal. Diana's father was John Spencer, Viscount Althorp, a personal aide to King George VI and to Queen Elizabeth II . Her mother was the Honourable Frances Shand-Kydd.

Diana's parents divorced in 1969. Her mother ran away with a wealthy heir, and her father gained custody of the children. He later married Raine Legge, whose mother was Barbara Cartland, a romance novelist.

Diana grew up practically next door to Queen Elizabeth II and her family, at Park House, a mansion next to the Sandringham estate of the royal family. Prince Charles was 12 years older, but Prince Andrew was closer to her age and was a childhood playmate.

After Diana's parents divorced, her father gained custody of her and her siblings. Diana was educated at home until she was 9 and was then sent to Riddlesworth Hall and West Heath School. Diana did not get along well with her stepmother, nor did she do well in school. Instead, she found an interest in ballet and, according to some reports, Prince Charles, whose picture she had on the wall of her room at school. When Diana was 16, she met Prince Charles again. He had dated her older sister Sarah. She made some impression on him, but she was still too young for him to date. After she dropped out of West Heath School at 16, she attended a finishing school in Switzerland, Chateau d'Oex. She left after a few months.

After Diana left school, she moved to London and worked as a housekeeper, nanny, and kindergarten teacher's aide. She lived in a house purchased by her father and had three roommates. In 1980, Diana and Charles met again when she went to visit her sister, whose husband worked for the queen . They began to date, and six months later Charles proposed. The two were married on July 29, 1981, in a much-watched wedding that's been called the "wedding of the century." Diana was the first British citizen to marry the heir to the British throne in almost 300 years.

Diana immediately began making public appearances despite her reservations about being in the public eye. One of her first official visits was to the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco. Diana soon became pregnant, giving birth to Prince William (William Arthur Philip Louis) on June 21, 1982, and then to Prince Harry (Henry Charles Albert David) on September 15, 1984.

Early in their marriage, Diana and Charles were publicly affectionate. By 1986, however, their time apart and coolness when together were obvious. The 1992 publication of Andrew Morton's biography of Diana revealed the story of Charles' long affair with Camilla Parker Bowles and alleged that Diana had made several suicide attempts. In February 1996, Diana announced that she had agreed to a divorce.

The divorce was finalized on August 28, 1996. Settlement terms reportedly included about $23 million for Diana plus $600,000 per year. She and Charles would both be active in their sons' lives. Diana continued to live at Kensington Palace and was permitted to retain the title Princess of Wales. At her divorce, she also gave up most of the charities she'd been working with, limiting herself to only a few causes: homelessness, AIDS, leprosy, and cancer.

In 1996, Diana became involved in a campaign to ban landmines. She visited several nations in her involvement with the anti-landmine campaign, an activity more political than the norm for the British royal family.

In early 1997, Diana was linked romantically with the 42-year-old playboy "Dodi" Fayed (Emad Mohammed al-Fayed). His father, Mohammed al-Fayed, owned Harrod's department store and the Ritz Hotel in Paris, among other properties.

On August 30, 1997, Diana and Fayed left the Ritz Hotel in Paris, accompanied in a car by a driver and Dodi's bodyguard. They were pursued by paparazzi. Just after midnight, the car spun out of control in a Paris tunnel and crashed. Fayed and the driver were killed instantly; Diana died later in a hospital despite efforts to save her. The bodyguard survived despite critical injuries.

The world quickly reacted. First came horror and shock. Blame was next, much of which was directed at the paparazzi who were following the princess's car and from whom the driver was apparently trying to escape. Later tests showed the driver had been well over the legal alcohol limit, but immediate blame was placed on the photographers and their seemingly incessant quest to capture images of Diana that could be sold to the press.

Then came an outpouring of sorrow and grief. The Spencers, Diana's family, established a charitable fund in her name, and within a week $150 million in donations had been raised. Princess Diana's funeral on September 6 drew worldwide attention. Millions turned out to line the path of the funeral procession.

In many ways, Diana and her life story paralleled much in popular culture. She was married near the beginning of the 1980s, and her fairy-tale wedding, complete with a glass coach and a dress that could not quite fit inside, was in sync with the ostentatious wealth and spending of the 1980s.

Her struggles with bulimia and depression shared so publicly in the press were also typical of the 1980s' focus on self-help and self-esteem. That she seemed to have finally begun to transcend many of her problems made her loss seem all the more tragic.

The 1980s realization of the AIDS crisis was one in which Diana played a significant part. Her willingness to touch and hug AIDS sufferers—at a time when many in the public wanted to quarantine those with the disease based on irrational and uneducated fears of easy communicability—helped change how AIDS patients were treated.

Today, Diana is still remembered as the "People's Princess," a woman of contradictions who was born into wealth yet seemed to have a "common touch"; a woman who struggled with her self-image yet was a fashion icon; a woman who sought attention but often stayed at hospitals and other charity sites long after the press had left. Her life has been the subject of numerous books and films, including "Diana: Her True Story," "Diana: Last Days of a Princess," and "Diana, 7 Days."

• Bumiller, Elisabeth, et al. “Death of Diana: Times Journalists Recall Night of the Crash.” The New York Times, 31 Aug. 2017.
• Clayton, Tim, and Phil Craig. "Diana: Story of a Princess." Atria Books, 2003.
• Lyall, Sarah. “Diana's Legacy: A Reshaped Monarchy, a More Emotional U.K.” The New York Times , 31 Aug. 2017.
• Morton, Andrew. "Diana: Her True Story - in Her Own Words." Michael O'Mara Books Limited, 2019.
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Why Princess Diana Risked Her Life for Humanitarian Causes in Africa

When Princess Diana was tragically killed in a car crash in 1997, Prince Charles knew exactly the place to take his young sons to escape the media and have the space to properly mourn their mother. “My dad told my brother and me to pack our bags — we were going to Africa to get away from it all,” Prince Harry told Town & Country .

The escape gave the young royals the opportunity to process what had happened, but there was also the symbolic connection that their mother had with the continent — that her sons now share as well. “I have this intense sense of complete relaxation and normality here. To not get recognized, to lose myself in the bush with what I would call the most down-to-earth people on the planet, people with no ulterior motives, no agendas, who would sacrifice everything for the betterment of nature,” the 35-year-old Duke of Sussex said. ”This is where I feel more like myself than anywhere else in the world. I wish I could spend more time in Africa.”

“Africa is the perfect place to come,” Prince William also said on a 2010 trip to Botswana . “The locals, wherever I go, haven't got a clue who I am and I love that.” That sense of anonymity the British royals rarely receive elsewhere has given them the opportunity to authentically experience the continent and understand its culture — as well as the issues the locals face, as they continue their mom’s work all over Africa. For Diana, frequent visits during her early years led to a love for Africa and a commitment to bettering the lives of its people.

READ MORE: Was Princess Diana a Commoner Before Marrying Prince Charles?

Diana began visiting African as soon as she became a princess

Diana set foot in Africa just days after she officially became a royal since she and Prince Charles honeymooned on a 12-day cruise through the Greek Islands to Egypt, greeting the then-president’s wife, Jehan Sadat, before flying back from Hurghada International Airport in August 1981. Five years later, she visited Hurghada, an Egyptian Red Sea resort town, during a 1986 tour of the Middle East.

But soon her royal tours started getting deeper, as she attended a Rural Women’s Fair in Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos, Nigeria, and visited hospital victims in Bamenda, Cameroon, during a March 1990 royal tour with Charles.

Two years later, in May 1992, she went on a five-day tour of Egypt on her own to see the archaeological sites and also met with mothers on welfare, held hands with children at the Cairo Institute for Polio and Rehabilitation, and reached out to kids at the Aswan Social Rehabilitation Centre.

She held hands with leprosy patients to show that the disease couldn't be spread by touch

Diana’s early visits exposed her to the African culture — as well as the issues the people faced — and she quickly used her influence to shed light on particular ones that weren’t getting attention, including leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, a bacterial disease that can lead to nerve damage and crippling of the hands and feet.

To combat rumors that it could be spread by touch, Diana visited patients suffering from the disease, held their hands and touched their wounds. Her work with The Leprosy Mission took her to India, Nepal and Zimbabwe, where she visited patients in a Tongogara refugee camp, in July 1993.

“It has always been my concern to touch people with leprosy, trying to show in a simple action that they are not reviled, nor are we repulsed,” the princess said of the disease

Months before her death, Diana walked through an active landmine to expose its danger

Perhaps one of Diana’s most notable humanitarian efforts is her commitment to exposing the danger of landmines by walking through an active one on January 15, 1997, in Huambo, Angola with The Halo Trust , an organization that has been clearing mines since 1994.

“I’d read the statistics that Angola has the highest percentage of amputees anywhere in the world,” she told the press . “That one person in every 333 had lost a limb, most of them through landmine explosions. But that hadn’t prepared me for reality.”

She met with landmine victims, young and old, including at Neves Bendinha, an ICRC Orthopedic Workshop in Luanda, Angola, before donning the armor and headgear to stroll into the field.

Landmine removal expert Paul Heslop recalled the day to the BBC: “She wasn't making eye contact, and I felt that initially, she was disinterested. And then, when the whole mob of journalists came off the other planes, I suddenly realized why she was so nervous. And this poor woman was about to go into a live minefield, a dangerous area, in front of however many hundreds of millions or billions of people on the news, and I thought back to the first time I went into a minefield, and I was petrified.”

After some careful instruction and reassurance, the two stepped into the field and the Princess pushed a button to detonate a dummy landmine. "One down, 17 million to go," Diana said as she hit the button.

When she returned home after the visit, she wrote a letter to the Red Cross saying, “If my visit has contributed in any way at all in highlighting this terrible issue, then my deepest wish will have been fulfilled.”

Nelson Mandela praised Diana for 'dramatically' changing the perception of AIDS patients

Her work even impressed one of the best-known activists of the generation, Nelson Mandela , who she met in Cape Town in March 1997, just months before her death.

Mandela complimented her for her work with the landmines in Angola and said her actions helped South Africa destroy its mines as well. He also lauded her for her work with AIDS victims. “We saw her sitting on the beds of AIDS patients and shaking hands with them, and that changed perceptions dramatically with regards to AIDS,” he said of her frequent visits to victims in the UK , as well as stops in Brazil and Canada.

And while she was technically on a private trip to visit her brother Earl Spencer who lived in Cape Town, she noted that was the point of her visit with Mandela too: “I came here to discuss the situation of AIDS in the country with the president and that's what we've been discussing. I said if I can help in any way, I'm available to do it.”

Diana said she was “absolutely thrilled” to meet Mandela and he said he was “still trembling” after the visit, adding that “I didn't know that I would meet a British princess.” When the photographers suggested he give her a kiss, he answered, “That would be treason.”

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Biography Online

Facts Princess Diana

• Diana Frances Spencer was born at Park House, Sandringham in Norfolk, England on 1 July 1961
• In 1975, she inherited the title ‘Lady Diana Spencer’ after her father became Earl Spencer. She held this title until her marriage in 1982.
• John Spencer, 8th Earl Spencer, and his first wife, Frances Spencer, Viscountess Althorp.
• After her parent’s divorce, she was brought up by her father, Earl Spencer.
• Her distant ancestors include Mary, Queen of Scots, Lady Catherine Grey, Mary Boleyn, and Robert I (The Bruce).
• She once said to the Duke of Edinburgh that the Spencer family she was born into was older and more aristocratic than the House of Windsor.

Religion : Church of England

• Silfield School Kings Lynn, Norfolk
• Riddlesworth Hall in Norfolk
• West Heath Girls’ School in Sevenoaks, Kent.
• She had a talent for music and was an accomplished pianist.
• She was not academically talented. She left school without any O levels, despite trying twice.
• More on Princess Diana’s Childhood
• Engaged on February 24, 1981, to Prince Charles – next in line to the throne.
• Engagement ring consisted of 14 diamonds and a sapphire.
• Charles and Diana were married on July 29th, 1981
• Their marriage at St Paul’s Cathedral, London was a global event with a combined TV audience of 750 million. Her funeral 16 years later had an estimated 2.5 billion viewers.
• When the couple married, Princess Diana was 20, Prince Charles 32.
• After her marriage, her official title was ‘Her Royal Highness, Princess of Wales.’
• The Princess of Wales is an honorific title given to the wife of the Prince of Wales, which was created after the conquest of Wales in 1301. There have been 10 Princesses of Wales since 1301.
• Camilla Parker-Bowles was officially entitled to the title of ‘Princess of Wales’ after her marriage to Prince Charles, but due to public association with Diana, she chose the title Duchess of Cornwall.
• After school, on the advice of her mother, she took an advanced cooking course, though never became adept at cooking.
• When she became engaged to Prince Charles, she was working as an assistant in a playgroup.
• The Princess of Wales was considered to be the world’s most photographed woman. Though some claim Grace Kelly came close.
• In 1995, Diana gave an interview to BBC television in which she admits to adultery and says that she would like to be “a queen in people’s hearts.” – November 1995
• Princess Diana met with Mother Teresa in June 1997, in the Bronx, New York a few months before her death.
• After her divorce, she dated respected heart surgeon Hasnat Khan. It was later made into a feature film, though Khan claims it misrepresented the truth.
• After much speculation over their married life, Diana and Charles separated on 9 December 1992. Princess Diana blamed Camilla Parker-Bowles for her relationship breakdown.
• After her divorce in August 1996, she lost her title ‘Her Royal Highness’ and became just Diana, Princess of Wales. However, she was still called a member of the Royal family.
• After her divorce, she gained $22.5 million lump sum and some $600,000 a year to maintain her private office.
• Diana called Camilla “the Rottweiler”. Camilla called her “that ridiculous creature”.
• On TV she admitted adultery, but, only after Charles had had an affair.

Charity Work

• Diana worked for many charities. Including AIDS awareness – ‘chain of hope’ organization.
• Princess Diana was the first prominent public figure in the UK to be pictured holding the hand of a person with AIDS in his hospital bed; an action which helped to change perceptions on AIDS victims.
• On World AIDS Day in 1993 and 1994, Princess Diana organised a Concert for Hope at Wembley Arena to raise awareness of HIV
• One of her many charities, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, won the Nobel Peace Prize a few months after her death.
• Princess Diana is credited with influencing the signing of the Ottawa Treaty, a ban on the use of anti-personnel landmines.
• More on Princess Diana’s Charity Work
• On 31 August 1997, Diana died in car crash in Paris along with Dodi Al-Fayed
• She died from her injuries at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital.
• Her tragic death led to an unprecedented wave of public grief, which eventually caused Royal Family to break old protocol and fly the flag at Buckingham Palace at half mast.
• Diana’s funeral service was conducted in Westminster Abbey on 6 September 1997.
• Princess Diana was buried with a set of rosary beads, which were a gift from Mother Teresa.
• Diana was buried on an island in the middle of a lake at her ancestral home of Althorp House in Northamptonshire.
• A French investigation found the driver Henri Paul, who was legally drunk at the time, was responsible for the accident.
• In 2004, an independent inquiry into her death found the case ‘complex’ but no evidence of a conspiracy. Though Dodi Al-Fayed’s father has often claimed a conspiracy to kill Diana and his son.
• After her death, Tony Blair referred to Princess Diana as the ‘People’s Princess.’

“She was the people’s princess and that’s how she will stay, how she will remain, in our hearts and in our memories forever.”

– Tony Blair

Related pages

Biography Princess Diana

Life story of Princess Diana

Charity work of Princess Diana including landmines and AIDS.

Diana: Princess of Wales by Mario Testino

Diana: Princess of Wales by Mario Testino at Amazon

Princess Diana: Her Life Story, 1961-1997

Princess Diana: Her Life Story, 1961-1997 at Amazon