The title of Dorian Leigh’s autobiography was The Girl Who Had Everything. Superficially, at least, this was true. Hailed in the 1940s as the first supermodel, she was envied by women for her cool beauty, and desired by men for all that met in her aspect and her eyes. Yet asked, at 60, whether she would have changed anything in her life, she replied: “Every single minute of it.”

Such forthright sentiments, such disregard for fame, even the ironic title of her memoir were characteristic of Leigh, and perhaps the key to her allure and her success as a model. She did not enter the profession until she was 27, by when she was already the divorced mother of two children and had held down demanding jobs as a mechanical engineer and copywriter.

Thus she was able to treat the camera on her own terms, keeping a certain reserve which, combined with the all-consuming gaze of her blue eyes, epitomised the opposing characteristics of her most famous campaign, for Revlon’s Fire and Ice. Scarlet-polished fingernails splayed before her face, diamonds cascading from her ear, Leigh looked like Snow White played by Liz Taylor.

And, indeed, as the model agency owner Eileen Ford confirmed, it was an act: “Dorian was truly the best model of our time,” she reflected in 1997. “She knew instinctively what every photographer wanted, and came alive just at the moment the shutter clicked.”

Leigh began modelling in 1944, having been advised to tell Diana Vreeland, the formidable editor of Harper’s Bazaar, that she was only 19. The following month she was on the cover of the magazine, and soon became the favoured model of both Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, who said she was the most versatile talent he had ever photographed. His image of her embracing a racing cyclist was among the first to take fashion out of the studio, and to mix different kinds of celebrity.

Arguably, Penn’s wife, Lisa Fonssagrives, was the more complete model, but in an era when photographic rather than runway models were regarded as fashion’s elite, Leigh was the first to dominate the industry. By 1950 she had appeared on more than 50 covers, including six for Vogue in 1946 alone, as well as becoming the face of Revlon, whose founder, Charles Revson, considered her his lucky talisman. Among the products she promoted for him, their names redolent of the glamour of the time, were Fatal Apple and Cherries in the Snow. Her salary was said to be $300,000, an unprecedented figure for a mannequin.

For Cecil Beaton, she could suggest “the sweetness of an 18th-century pastel, the allure of a Sargent portrait, or the poignancy of some unfortunate woman who sat for Modigliani”.

A fellow model put it more directly: “She had so much oestrogen, like some men are full of testosterone.”

Inevitably, her combination of curves and intelligence (she had poems published in the New Yorker) made her catnip for men, to whom she in turn was unashamedly attracted.

Aside from other liaisons, she married and divorced four times, but the great sadness of her life was the suicide at the age of 21 of her son by the Spanish racing driver Alfonso Cabeza de Vaca, Marquis of Portago. She blamed herself for having tried to raise him without a father, to the disapproval of society. Against its judgment, her beauty was no protection, and in later life Leigh turned to the twin comforts of cooking and born-again Christianity.

One of four girls, she was born Dorian Elizabeth Leigh Parker in San Antonio, Texas, in 1917. Her youngest sister, Cecilia, would in the 1950s, as Suzy Parker, eclipse even her own fame as a model. By then, their father had also dropped his opposition to their working under the family name in such a vulgar industry.

He was an industrial chemist, and after they had moved to New York they grew up in some comfort on the proceeds of his patent for a kind of etching acid. Dorian was educated at Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Virginia, and by the age of 20 was already divorced from her first husband, Marshall Hawkins. Needing to support herself and raise her children, she studied calculus at New York University, and then found work with the US Navy as a draughtsman. (Her second husband, Roger Mehle, was an admiral.) Later she designed aircraft wings.

In the 1960s, having made occasional appearances on Broadway and in films, Leigh moved to France, where she ran a modelling agency. After the end of marriages to Serge Bordat and Iddo Ben-Gurion she trained as a chef, and in the 1970s opened a catering company in New York State. She worked with Martha Stewart, and made pâtés for delicatessens.

Leigh lived for the present rather than in the past, and kept few mementoes of her modelling days — a photograph by Penn of her in a field, another by Avedon of her in Schiaparelli jewellery.

Her many friends included Truman Capote, and it was speculated that Leigh was the inspiration for the character of Holly Golightly in his novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Her family and friends always knew whether they were in her good graces or not — for many years she did not speak to her sister Suzy, who disapproved of her many romances — and she liked nothing better than to entertain them. Even at 90 her presence wholly filled a room.

She is survived by a son and two daughters. Another daughter predeceased her.

Dorian Leigh, model, was born on April 23, 1917. She died on July 7, 2008, aged 91