(JTA) — Best-selling novelist Jackie Collins has died.

Collins, whose South African-born father was Jewish and British mother was Anglican, died on Saturday in Los Angeles after battling breast cancer for the last six years. She was 77.

Collins “lived a wonderfully full life and was adored by her family, friends and the millions of readers who she has been entertaining for over four decades. She was a true inspiration, a trail blazer for women in fiction and a creative force. She will live on through her characters but we already miss her beyond words,” the family said in a statement posted on the novelist’s website.

More than 500 million copies of her novels, most depicting the steamy lives of women in Hollywood, have been sold in 40 countries throughout the world. Collins’ first novel, “The World Is Full of Married Men,” was published in 1968. Romance novelist Barbara Cartland called it “nasty, filthy and disgusting,” and it was banned in Australia and South Africa.

She is best known for her 1983 novel “Hollywood Wives,” which sold more than 15 million copies, and spawned several sequels and a television mini-series.

She was born in London and moved to the United States in the 1980s.

Collins had her last interview with People magazine, which first reported her death, a week ago. She said her breast cancer diagnosis came more than six years ago, but she only told her three grown daughters, Tracy, 54; Tiffany, 48; and Rory, 46 about it.

She was the younger sister of actress Joan Collins, of “Dynasty” fame.

“Looking back, I’m not sorry about anything I did,” she told People.

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