Style Icons: Female »Donyale Luna

Exotic Beauty

If there were one woman to embody the word exotic, it would have to be the stunningly gorgeous Donyale Luna. Her illustrious film and fashion modeling career landed her the first African American cover of Vogue, though her relationship to her race was far more complicated than that of proud pioneer.

She was born in Detroit where her abusive father murdered her mother when she was a teen, but, maybe in attempt to distance herself from a traumatic past, she claimed to be of a mysterious lineage of Mexican, Indonesian, Irish. She never wanted to be defined by her race.

Notably as strange as she was beautiful, she was said to have been wild and unpredictable and sadly died of a drug overdose at age 33. She was romantically linked to Klaus Kinski among others.


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Posted on February 3, 2011

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1 Comment

  • From Ricardo Bell on December 22, 2013 at 8:48 am

    Born in Detroit, Michigan, Luna was a beautiful model but tragic figure who ran away from her true heritage……..being Black!