Story highlights
Amphlett was the lead singer for the Australian band the Divinyls
The band's "I Touch Myself" reached No. 1 in Australia, No. 4 in United States in 1991
Amphlett fought multiple sclerosis, breast cancer
Australian rocker Chrissy Amphlett, the Divinyls lead singer whose group scored an international hit with the sexually charged “I Touch Myself” in the early 1990s, died Sunday after a battle with breast cancer and multiple sclerosis, her husband said.
She was 53.
“Chrissy’s light burns so very brightly,” her husband, former Divinyls drummer Charley Drayton, said in a statement. “Hers was a life of passion and creativity; she always lived it to the fullest. With her force of character and vocal strength, she paved the way for strong, sexy, outspoken women.”
In 1991, the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” reached No. 1 in Australia and No. 4 on the United States’ Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The group, which formed in Australia in the early 1980s, was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association’s hall of fame in 2006.
Amphlett, who lived in New York with her husband, announced in 2010 that she had breast cancer, several years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She said in an interview that her family made the diagnoses easier.
“It’s unfair, but life is not fair – even rock stars get breast cancer,” she told the Sydney Morning Herald. “But there have been many girls before me who have dealt with it successfully. It’s easy to feel sorry for me but I feel sorry for people who are suffering it alone.”
