Heather Mills, born in 1968 in Washington, Tyne and Wear, England, began her career as a model, then businesswoman, but is most famous as the wife of Paul McCartney. An amputee, following a car accident, Heather is also a determined woman working for charity.

Running from a hellish family break up and with her father in prison, Heather lived on the London streets as a teenager. Encouraged into modelling by Alfie Karmal, a computer executive, Heather quickly moved beyond the catwalk and set up her own modelling agency in 1986. At 21, Heather married Karmal, but the union was brief, and she moved to Yugoslavia to work as a ski instructress. As civil war ripped up the Balkans, Heather founded a refugee crisis centre in London ,and donated her modelling income.

On a visit to London in 1993, Heather was crossing the street when a police bike hit her, catapulting her into the air. The bike severed her left leg below the knee. Devastated, but not to be thwarted in her work, Heather saw the number of discarded prosthetic limbs lying about Britain and she shipped 25,000 limbs to the Balkans, becoming a spokeswoman for the UN campaign, Adopt-A-Minefield.

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney was so impressed by Heather that he donated funds to her charity in 1999. Three years later they married at Castle Leslie in Ireland, with the tabloid media insisting that Heather was a gold digger, and had a bad relationship with McCartney’s children.

Heather continues to model, and she is the face of INC International Concepts, who have donated a percentage of profits to mine victims.

Credit: thebiographychannel.co.uk