from BBC World News

The US singer and actress Lena Horne has died in New York at the age of 92.

Renowned for her beauty and sultry voice, Ms Horne battled racism to become Hollywood's first black sex symbol.

In 1943, she played Selina Rogers in the all-black film musical Stormy Weather, the title song of which was to be a major hit and her signature tune.

Her career spanned more than 60 years. Later she embraced activism and became a voice for civil rights in the US.

When asked about her success, Ms Horne once said: "I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept.

"I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked."

In 1981, her one-woman show, the award-winning The Lady and her Music, based on her life and career, ran for more than a year on Broadway and in London.

Lena Horne: The star who blew a storm

Lena Horne's singing career spanned more than 60 years. With her passionate voice and good looks, she became the first black sex symbol in the 1930s.

She was born in Brooklyn. Her mother was an actress and her father ran a small hotel.

Horne's parents separated when she was three, and she was boarded out. She did not live with her mother again until she was 15.

A year later she became a chorus singer in Harlem's fashionable Cotton Club. Her mother used to chaperone her there every night.

At 19, she ran away from home, got married and went on to raise two children.

Musical numbers edited

By now she had begun to sing regularly on radio and toured with Noble Sissle's orchestra in the mid-1930s, and sang with the Charlie Barnett band in the early 1940s.

After conquering New York's Cafe Society club, she was snapped up by Hollywood on the coming of sound.

She appeared in a cluster of musicals including Cabin in the Sky and Stormy Weather, the title song of which became her signature tune.

The musical Stormy Weather gave Horne her theme tune

Her mixed ancestry - she was part white, Blackfoot Indian and Senegalese - affected her career.

During a period when black women were cast as menials, not stars, Lena Horne found many of her numbers edited out of the versions shown in southern states.

The studios lightened her appearance with special white make-up. But she refused to play stereotyped roles.

On tour, she often slept on the coach when hotels refused to rent her a room. She became active in the civil-rights movement and was blacklisted in the McCarthy era.

Catalogue of tragedy

She was happily married for 24 years to a white man, Lennie Hayton, musical director of MGM in Paris. But this only added to her emotional pressure.

By the 1950s, in musicals like Jamaica, black artists were beginning to gain acceptance.

Lena Horne went on to win international fame, finding her niche giving jazz renditions to popular songs such as Honeysuckle Rose and The Lady is a Tramp.

For 13 months in 1971-72 she suffered a catalogue of tragedy. First she lost her father. Then her son from her first marriage died of kidney failure. Soon afterwards, Lennie Hayton had a fatal heart attack.

Shattered, she went into retirement but, after a time, friends persuaded her to resume her career.

It reached a late climax in 1981 when her one-woman show, the award-winning The Lady and her Music, based on her life and career, ran for more than a year on Broadway and, subsequently, in London.