- Celebrities. Celebrity realtor explains significance of JLo and Affleck's house going on the market
- Celebrities. Diddy accused of threatening journalist Danyel Smith to leave her 'dead in the boot of a car'
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the famous sex therapist known to many across the USA as "Dr. Ruth", has passed away at the age of 96.
The news was revealed by her publicist, Pierre Lehu, noting that Westheimer passed away at her home in Manhattan on Friday.
At this time, no cause of death has been announced.
Westheimer relocated to the USA
Born in Germany in 1928, Westheimer survived the Holocaust before moving to the United States. She made her name in 1980 when she began the famed "Sexually Speaking" segment on the WYNY radio network in New York during her 50s.
On the show she helped de-stigmatize sex for Americans, despite being just a 15-minute segment that hit the waves after midnight on Sundays.
However it became a hit, and its success helped her go on to host several TV shows, as well as pen over 45 books.
She encourage open dialogue on what was a previously taboo subject, and made it clear that people had nothing to be ashamed of.
"I still hold old-fashioned values and I'm a bit of a square," she told students at Michigan City High School in 2002. "Sex is a private art and a private matter. But still, it is a subject we must talk about."
She even landed a role in the 1985 French film "One Woman or Two" which starred Gerard Depardieu and Sigourney Weaver.
She is survived by her two children and four grandchildren.