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Dora Than-E, the veteran Burmese singer and close friend of Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, died at her home in Oxford, England, o­n Sunday at age 99.

Widely considered o­ne of Burma’s greatest singers, Than-E won the hearts of Burmese audiences with gramophone recordings from the 1930s. She later married an Austrian documentary film maker and lived most of her live outside Burma, working for the UN in India, Algeria, Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Than-E was also a close friend of Burma's independence hero Gen Aung San, former UN Secretary-General U Thant and the country’s detained pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi.

In 1995, Than-E accepted the Jawaharlal Nehru Award o­n the behalf of Suu Kyi. In her address, she read a statement by Suu Kyi that described Than-E as "the first Burmese to become a member of the United Nations Secretariat, she has been an ardent advocate and a practitioner of international understanding."