Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu

Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, who has died aged 86, was the outspoken beauty who served as South Vietnam’s unofficial first lady and earned the nickname Dragon Lady for her harsh criticism of protesting Buddhist monks and communist sympathisers. She died in a Rome hospital where she was registered as Tran Le Xuan, her original Vietnamese name, meaning Beautiful Spring.

Madame Nhu lived in the former presidential palace in South Vietnam’s capital, Saigon, with her husband, the powerful head of the secret police, and his bachelor brother, President Ngo Dinh Diem, who served from 1955 to 1963. She took on the role of first lady as US-backed South Vietnam fought northern communist forces before Washington broadened its military effort.

In the early 1960s, the trendsetting Madame Nhu was often photographed with her bouffant hairdo and glamorous clothes, including a tight version of the traditional silk tunic known as the ao dai, which showcased her slender body.

She was equally well known for her fiery rhetoric, and was particularly outspoken against Buddhist monks who were setting themselves on fire to protest at Diem’s crackdown – once saying she would “clap hands at seeing another monk barbecue show, for one cannot be responsible for the madness of others”.

Her Buddhist father, Tran Van Chuong, who was serving as the South Vietnamese ambassador to the US, resigned in protest as did her mother, Nam-Tran Chuong, who was South Vietnam’s permanent observer to the United Nations. Madame Nhu later called her father “a coward”.

She was in the US on a speaking tour on November 1, 1963, when her husband, Ngo Dinh Nhu, was killed along with Diem in a US-backed coup, ending his eight-year rule.

Madame Nhu went into exile in Italy and remained in Europe until her death, living a reclusive life in which she left her home only to attend Mass, according to family friend Thu Phu Truong.

“When you hear the news one of your friends or relatives passes away, you are probably very sad. In this case, I am kind of joyful,” Truong said. “When her husband was killed, she was away, and she lived by herself ... for what? She is waiting for the day she can be reunited with her husband.”

Madame Nhu had been raised Buddhist in Hanoi by well-off and highly influential aristocratic parents, but she converted to Catholicism in 1943 when she married Nhu, who was nearly twice her age. She remained deeply religious until her death, Mr Truong said.

In 1986, her brother was charged with strangling their elderly father and mother in their Washington DC house. He was found incompetent to stand trial and deported.

In a statement, she said: “After what has been done against Vietnam, my country, my people and my family by the USA, without it having ever contemplated reparation and without the West intervening on behalf of justice and truth as taught to it through the Messianic message, I do not recognise (their) right to question and judge any of mine.”

Her villa in the countryside on the outskirts of Rome included a chapel with a statue of the Virgin Mary. Madame Nhu had four children. Her oldest daughter was killed in a car crash in 1967.