Denise Matthews, 53; singer Vanity, later became minister . NEW YORK -
Denise Matthews, the singer, model, and actress known as Vanity who
toured with Prince in the 1980s before eschewing her wild persona for a
life as a minister, died Monday in Fremont, Calif.. She was 57. Ms.
Matthews's sister Renay Matthews confirmed her death. She said Ms.
Matthews had checked into a hospital Saturday night after years of
health problems related to her kidneys. Denise Katrina Matthews was
born on Jan. 4, 1959, the daughter of Helga Senyk and James Levia
Matthews, and grew up in Niagara Falls, Ontario. She worked as a model
in Canada before moving to the United States. She met Prince at the
American Music Awards in 1980, and the two soon became romantically
involved. He also invited her to be a part of Vanity 6, the funky,
erotically charged girl group that had a hit in 1982 with "Nasty Girl"
and toured with Prince. She appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with
Prince, in a portrait shot by Richard Avedon, with her hands creeping
down the front of his pants. Ms. Matthews was supposed to play the
female lead role in "Purple Rain," the semiautobiographical Prince film
that was a box-office hit in 1984, but she abandoned the project before
filming began. She went on to release two albums as a solo artist on
Motown, "Wild Animal" and "Skin on Skin. She thrived on raciness, often
performing in lingerie. "My music is very sexual, so you could say I'm
just putting all of me out there," she told the Associated Press in
1985. She was on the cover of Playboy in 1988. As an actress, she
appeared on television and in films including "The Last Dragon," "Never
Too Young to Die," "Action Jackson," and "52 Pick-Up. By her own later
admission, Ms. Matthews led a fast life, and it took its toll. In an
interview with Jet magazine in 1993, she said she had been "extremely
wild" in her younger days. "There was a lot of cocaine," she said. "I
tried men, women, everything. I didn't snort cocaine, I smoked it. She
told Jet that drug use had nearly killed her: She had had renal failure
a few years earlier and was told by doctors that she had only three
days to live. After that experience, her life took a religious turn.
She left the name Vanity behind and became a Christian evangelist. "All
I had become was thus painted on my face - vanity," she later wrote on
a personal website. According to her sister, Ms. Matthews eventually
became an ordained minister and preached in churches around the
country. She published an autobiography in 1999, "Blame It on Vanity.
In the mid-1990s, Ms. Matthews was briefly married to the professional
football player Anthony Wayne Smith, who was sentenced to life in
prison for murder last month. 'Her and I used to love each other
deeply. She loved me for the artist I was; I loved her for the artist
she was trying to be. Prince, onstage in Melbourne, speaking about his
former tour-mate As news of her death spread Monday during the Grammy
Awards, many musicians expressed their condolences on social media.
"Vanity was everything to me," wrote the drummer for The Roots, Ahmir
Thompson, better known as Questlove. The rapper MC Hammer said he had
been in church with Ms. Matthews on Saturday. "Vanity left church after
giving a beautiful testimony," he wrote. Onstage in Melbourne on
Tuesday, Prince offered a tribute of his own. "Her and I used to love
each other deeply," he told the crowd, according to Australian news
media accounts. "She loved me for the artist I was; I loved her for the
artist she was trying to be.
