London - Princess Diana's death means she joins a list of much-mourned famous figures who died before their time.
James Dean, the film star icon who captured the imagination of a generation, was killed in a car crash, aged 24 in 1955.
Fifteen years later, another generation of youngsters was shocked by the death of rock star Jimi Hendrix from a drugs overdose. He was 27. In 1980, John Lennon of The Beatles was murdered in New York at the age of 40. Three years before, an even greater rock star - Elvis Presley - had died at the age of 42.
But perhaps the person whose early death had a similar impact to Diana's was Marilyn Monroe.
Like Diana, Monroe was 36 when she died, in 1962. Like Diana, she was beautiful, much-photographed, controversial and, at times, intensely unhappy.