Vanity: Prince protégée who fronted the synth-pop trio Vanity 6, fell prey to drug abuse and became a born-again Christian

Prince Rogers Nelson was so prolific in the 1980s that he had myriad protégées, ranging from the Stax Records veteran Mavis Staples, and Jill Jones, via regular collaborators Wendy & Lisa, Sheila E and Sheena Easton, to the electro pop trio Vanity 6.

The actress and singer Denise “Vanity” Matthews, who has died of kidney failure, fronted Vanity 6, the synth-pop outfit for whom Prince wrote and produced the club smash “Nasty Girl” in 1982, crediting her with the song in a bizarre move he still occasionally pulls on unsuspecting acolytes and associates. In the mid-1980s Vanity switched from Prince's Paisley Park operation to Berry Gordy Jr's Motown label in an attempt to launch a solo career that didn't fare as well. However, she continued acting, even if her hedonistic lifestyle and the bad company she kept – she dated Adam Ant and Billy Idol and the Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx – took their toll on her health.

Born Denise Matthews in Niagara Falls, Ontario, in 1959, she owed her striking looks to a complicated lineage taking in Poland, Germany, Hawaii and Native American ancestry. Having won the Miss Niagara Hospitality contest in 1977 she moved to New York and signed up with the Zoli Model Agency. Her lack of height held her back from the runways but brought other work, including toothpaste advertisements.

In 1980 she met Prince at the American Music Awards and they became romantically involved. When she told him she could sing, he renamed her Vanity and teamed her up with Brenda Bennett and Susan Moonsie, the two women he had envisaged for the outré trio Vanity 6.

Prince's cachet briefly made Vanity 6 ubiquitous. Vanity posed behind a fishnet for the eye-catching cover of Cameo's 1982 album Alligator Woman, and the group contributed “He's So Dull”, penned by the Prince and the Revolution guitarist Dez Dickerson, to the soundtrack of National Lampoon's Vacation, the comedy starring Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo (the Ramones and Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac also appeared on the album).

While “He's So Dull” flopped as a single, the sexually explicit “Nasty Girl” seemed to embody everything Prince aficionados expected from the pop polymath, and topped the dance club charts. He also composed and produced the trio's equally daring debut album, Vanity 6, which made the US Top 50 as his protégées accompanied him and The Time on his 1999 Tour until the spring of 1983.

By then, Vanity had made her mark as a provocative, raunchy performer. She posed with Prince for a Rolling Stone cover story and was offered the lead role of Apollonia opposite him as The Kid in the semi-autobiographical film Purple Rain but she decided to move on after the release of the “Drive Me Wild” single, prompting her former beau to replace her with Patricia Kotero and create Apollonia 6.

The tracks Vanity had already recorded for a mooted second album by Vanity 6 on Paisley Park were shelved when she signed to Motown in 1984. Still operating at the risqué end of the dance-R&B scene, she issued two modestly successful solo albums on Gordy's label, Wild Animal and Skin On Skin, and also charted with the singles “Pretty Mess”, “Mechanical Emotion” and “Under The Influence”.

Subsequent deals with the A&M and Geffen labels produced little new material though she cut a brace of new tracks with Jesse Johnson of The Time for Action Jackson, the Joel Silver-produced film she starred in alongside Sharon Stone and Carl Weathers in 1988.

Reverting to acting seemed more comfortable for Vanity, who had been in several B features, including Terror Train and Tanya's Island, in her native Canada, and continued to mine that seam in the US with 52 Pick-Up and Never Too Young To Die – starring Gene Simmons of KISS fame. In 1985, she appeared in The Last Dragon, the martial arts film produced by Gordy, and also contributed to its soundtrack, most notably with the slinky “7th Heaven”, though the track was usurped by DeBarge's worldwide smash “Rhythm Of The Night”.

Her career never arguably recovered from this, despite television work in Miami Vice, Highlander: The Series and Friday the 13th: The Series. In the mid-1990s she nearly died from her well-documented addiction to crack cocaine and was given three days to live.

She abandoned the Vanity alias and became a born-again Christian. “When I came to the Lord Jesus Christ, I threw out 1,000 tapes of mine – every interview, every tape, every video. Everything,” she said. In 1997, she had a kidney transplant but struggled with health issues, including peritonitis, for the rest of her life and had to undergo dialysis several times a day. In 2010, she published her autobiography, Blame It On Vanity: Hollywood, Hell and Heaven. Hers was indeed a cautionary tale.

Denise Katrina Matthews (Vanity), singer, songwriter, model and actress: born Niagara Falls, Ontario 4 January 1959; married 1995 Anthony Smith (divorced 1996); died Fremont, California 15 February 2016.