Denise Matthews, Canadian-born Prince protégé known as Vanity, dead at 57

Denise Matthews, a former protege of Prince and lead singer of ’80s group Vanity 6, has died from kidney failure, according to several reports.

Matthews passed away in a hospital in Fremont, California.

Late past year, Matthews launched a GoFundMe campaign to pay her medical costs, asking for $50,000, but raising less than $7,000.

It’s a sad ending for an artist who showed so much promise with Vanity 6’s 1982 hit, “Nasty Girl”, produced by Prince.

After a romantic relationship between Vanity and Prince dissolved, Vanity went and got a record deal of her own, and the group was renamed Apollonia 6 after its new singer, Apollonia Kotero.

Mathews’ career was cut short because she was struggling with crack addiction and upon overdosing in 1994 she almost died of renal failure.

Matthews spent her remaining years as a born-again Christian and was an active member of her local church.

“I put the sexual image of me in my music”, she said of her sex-up public persona.

Vanity met Prince at the 1980 American Music Awards and it was during that time when he renamed her Vanity because he said that he saw his female reflection when he looked at her. Interesting! She received a kidney transplant in 1997.

Matthews was on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1983 (with Prince) and on Playboy in 1988, and acted in films including “The Last Dragon”, “Never Too Young to Die” and “Action Jackson”, The Times says. “Her and I used to love each other deeply”, he told the crowd, according to Australian news media accounts.

After that experience, her life took a religious turn.

They appeared to center around a kidney ailment and a dialysis treatment that may have led to the often deadly condition sclerosis encapsulating peritonitis, also known as abdominal cocoon. “I am raising funds for my life’s work in the ministry, my book and, as I said before, my ongoing bills”.