Jade Goody's family asks for "privacy at last" after the death at 27 of the brash former dental assistant who turned her tumultuous life and struggle with cervical cancer into a one-woman reality show.

Mocked as a slob, then celebrated as an everywoman, Goody lived one of the UK's most public lives, with cameras capturing everything from her racial slurs to her cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy. Goody gained fame in 2002 at age 21 when she joined the British version of the reality television show "Big Brother".

Goody married fiancee Jack Tweed last month in an elaborate event staged at an elegant countryside hotel outside London. The wedding was shown on television and the photos were sold, prompting criticism.

But Goody, who grew up in a poor London neighborhood, defended herself - saying she wanted her two young sons to have a better life than she had. Goody's father was a heroin addict who served jail time for robbery and died in 2005; her mother was a former crack addict who lost the use of an arm in a motorcycle accident.

"People will say I'm doing this for money," she said. "And they're right, I am. But not to buy flash cars or big houses - it's for my sons' future if I'm not here. I don't want my kids to have the same miserable, drug-blighted, poverty-stricken childhood I did."