One of the greatest female stars of classical Hollywood cinema, Grace Kelly appeared in 60 television shows and 11 films, including, most famously, a trio of Alfred Hitchcock movies, including Dial M for Murder, in which she was cast as an “icy blonde.” She wore this dress, an Edith Head design, while portraying yet another ice queen in Alfred Hitchock’s To Catch a Thief. 

At a photoshoot at the Cannes Film Festival, Kelly happened to meet Prince Rainier III of Monaco, and less than a year later, at age 26, they would marry. As Princess Consort of Monaco, she cut short her acting career, and indeed the Prince banned her movies from being shown in the Principality. She found other passions, in charitable work and flowers—she founded the Garden Club of Monaco and taught floral arrangement. Her pressed flower art pieces were shown in Paris and became a series of stamps in the 1970s. French perfume house Krigler’s #12 fragrance, with rose, violet, and lily of the valley, was Kelly’s signature scent.

Tragically, Kelly would die after a terrible automobile accident on the Grand Corniche when she suffered a stroke at the wheel and her car plunged 40 feet off an embankment. She was just 52. Her favourite flower was the rose, and Prince Rainier established a public rose garden on the Côte D’Azure in her memory which grows more than 4,000 roses.