Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving sibling of President John F. Kennedy and a former ambassador to Ireland, has at the age of 92.
Smith died at her home in Manhattan on Wednesday.
Her daughter, Kym, confirmed to sad news to The New York Times.
Her role as the US ambassador in Ireland throughout the 1990s helped pave the way for a formal agreement to end decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, the Times reports.
Smith brought the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to the negotiating table during her time in office, something which was seen as a key step in ending sectarian violence in the country, per the BBC.
"The Irish people were willing to take me at face value, to give me the benefit of the doubt because I was a Kennedy," she said of her time in office in 1998. "I was a cog, really, in the machine that was moving. I was fortunate to be here to perhaps add momentum to what was happening."
Smith was born on 20 February 1928 in Boston, Massachusetts, and studied English at Manhattanville College.
In her 2016 memoir, The Nine of Us, she said her childhood seemed "unexceptional".
"It is hard for me to fully comprehend that I was growing up with brothers who eventually occupy the highest offices of our nation, including president of the United States," she wrote, referring to John and Robert Kennedy.
She married Stephen E Smith in 1956, an executive in a transportation company founded by his grandfather. He died in 1990.
The couple are survived by their two daughters, Kym and Amanda, two sons, Stephen Jr and William, and six grandchildren.
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