These little-known Princess Diana facts reveal a whole new side of everyone’s favorite royal
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Diana wanted to become a ballerina, not a princess
Princess Diana made headlines around the world in 1985 when she surprised an audience at the Royal Opera House in London with a three-minute contemporary dance performance alongside her friend and former Royal Ballet principal Wayne Sleep. Even if you’ve heard about this impressive moment, you probably don’t know that the Princess of Wales had almost become a professional dancer herself! As a child in Norfolk, England, she took ballet lessons and dreamt of life as a ballerina. However, her plans were shattered because, at nearly 5’11”, she was considered too tall for the stage. Diana went on to become a princess instead, but her love of dancing remained.
As Canadian dancer Anne Allan revealed in her book Dancing with Diana, she gave the princess weekly dance lessons in a secret studio for almost a decade. Allan started tutoring Diana just a few months after she married Prince Charles, and the pair became close both as dance partners and as friends. Diana was also a lifelong fan (and financial supporter) of the English National Ballet.
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She dropped out of school at 16
While her husband had studied archaeology, anthropology and history at the University of Cambridge, Princess Diana didn’t have a college education. In fact, Diana dropped out of high school at just 16 after failing her O-Level exams (the final certification for secondary school) twice.
She went on to study at the Institut Alpin Videmanette in Switzerland, where she learned about social etiquette rather than academic subjects. But that wasn’t her cup of tea either, so she returned to the U.K. after just one term. There, she took up a job as a teaching assistant at a local nursery school and worked part-time until she married into the royal family.
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She met Charles only 13 times before their wedding
When Diana and Charles tied the knot on July 29, 1981, they were basically strangers. They had met only 13 times before exchanging their vows at St. Paul’s Cathedral, in front of a televised audience of 750 million people watching around the world. “Diana was young and inexperienced, and Charles was 13 years her senior,” says Fitzwilliams. “It didn’t help that they were total opposites and didn’t really know anything about each other.”
In hindsight, it was not surprising that their marriage didn’t work out. Fitzwilliams believes that while Charles’s affair with his now-wife Camilla might have been the final nail in the coffin, chances were the couple would have split up anyway—and sooner rather than later. “They were a terrible mismatch,” Fitzwilliams says, “and the marriage was a dreadful mistake.”
In December 1992, Diana and Charles officially announced that they had separated. Four-and-a-half years later, the divorce was finalized.
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There was one vow Diana didn’t make
Most royal brides, including Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret and Princess Anne, adhered to the wedding vows as prescribed in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer—including the one that says to “obey him and serve him, love, honor, and keep him, in sickness and in health.” But not Princess Diana. She decided to omit the “obey” part. Instead, she promised to ”love him, comfort him, honor and keep him, in sickness and in health.” That progressive choice was later echoed by her future daughters-in-law, Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle.
As the New York Times reported at the time, Charles and Diana had held “very serious” discussions about the wording with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, before their wedding day. Both the bride and groom believed the word obey was outdated, and the archbishop actually shared that sentiment, saying he was “absolutely delighted” by their decision to go with a modernized vow.
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Diana lived with roommates before she married Charles
Even though Diana was “a commoner,” she was anything but an ordinary girl. “The Spencers were one of the top aristocratic families in the country,” says Fitzwilliams. “They were among the wealthiest and most prominent families in British nobility.” And Diana grew up on Sandringham estate, one of the royal family’s residences, and mingled with the royals from a young age. “They were practically neighbors, and they knew one another.”
Once she flew the family nest, though, and ended up in London in her late teens, she did what most people at that age do—she shared an apartment with a couple of friends. Her flatmates on Old Brompton Street in Kensington, West London, were longtime friends Carolyn Pride, Anne Bolton and Virginia Pitman. Pride, a music student at the time, later became Prince Harry’s godmother, and Bolton owns the horse farm where Harry spent part of his two-month gap trip at the age of 19. Pitman was known as an experienced traveler and hitchhiker when she moved in with the future princess.
Today, the famous apartment is now a tourist site—official plaque included!
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Diana was a huge fan of Duran Duran
Like many teens and 20-somethings at the time, Princess Diana adored ’80s music—and British band Duran Duran was one of her all-time favorites. “She was a big fan of [the] band and a big supporter early on,” Duran Duran drummer Roger Taylor recalled in an interview with Entertainment Tonight in 2022. On another occasion, he raved about Diana, saying, “It was massive for us because she was the No. 1 icon of the early ’80s.”
The princess and the band met twice: at the 1983 Prince’s Trust concert and the 1985 premiere of the James Bond movie A View to a Kill. Diana’s love for Duran Duran was also documented in The Crown, when Diana could be seen roller-skating through Kensington Palace with the band’s music blasting on her Walkman.
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Diana charmed Queen Elizabeth at first—but it didn’t last
The relationship Diana shared with her mother-in-law, Queen Elizabeth II, was a complex one. “When Diana first came to Balmoral with Charles, she seemed to get on well with the family, including the queen,” says Fitzwilliams. “She appeared to be a typical aristocratic country girl everybody liked.” However, the honeymoon phase with the royals didn’t last long. “After the wedding, a lot of things went wrong very quickly, and I believe the queen couldn’t understand why,” Fitzwilliams explains. “Diana’s whole marriage with Charles was a disaster pretty much from the start.”
There were many issues between the women over the years. Some of the main “offenders”? Diana’s HIV charity work (the queen encouraged her to focus on “more pleasant” things, according to Diana’s bodyguard); Diana’s frequent unannounced visits (a no-go in the royal household, even for close family members); and Diana’s eating disorders (the queen reportedly thought they caused marriage problems with Charles).
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She believed in healers and astrology
Princess Diana often turned to new-age practices when things didn’t go well in her life. “She frequented clairvoyants, healers and astrologists, who all made good money with her, especially when her marriage started to fall apart,” Fitzwilliams reveals. He adds that it was Sarah Ferguson who initially introduced Diana to mysticism: “Diana was insecure and unhappy throughout a good part of her life, which is why she gladly [sought] advice from healers and the like.”
Prince Harry seems to have inherited his mother’s interest in alternative therapies. In his tell-all book Spare, he discusses energy practitioners, wellness gurus and his acupuncturist. He also mentions a woman “with powers” who, he says, delivered a message from his late mother when they met. According to Harry, Diana told him through the medium that she was with him “right now” and that he was “living the life she couldn’t.”
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Diana had no plans to step back from the spotlight
Considering Diana was chased by paparazzi right until she spoke her last words in 1997, it’s often assumed that the princess longed for a life away from the spotlight. However, Fitzwilliams says that Diana had no intention of swapping her high profile for something more low-key and quiet. In fact, she was already working on a post-divorce public career before she had even split with the future king.
Discussing the infamous TV interview in which the princess talked at length about her crumbling marriage and Charles’s affair with Camilla, Fitzwilliams says her performance was basically “a public job application.” For what? “She wanted to become an ambassador for Britain. She had the royal background and the public profile, and she knew the vast majority of the people supported her,” he explains. “Her idea was to use all of this to continue her landmine campaigns and her HIV charity work and support other causes close to her heart.”
Fitzwilliams believes Tony Blair, the British prime minister at the time, “would surely have found a use for her unique talents.”
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She didn’t forgive and forget
While she seemed like everybody’s darling in the public eye, Diana apparently had quite a temper behind the scenes. “She fell out with people really quickly if they contradicted her,” says Fitzwilliams. “And she wasn’t one to forgive easily either. In some cases, the fallout was permanent.” As an example, he mentions Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, who went from being Diana’s BFF to being banished by her overnight. “Fergie told people she’d gotten a verruca (a plantar wart) after borrowing Diana’s shoes. That was it with their friendship.”
Fun fact: It was Diana, of all people, who initially introduced Fergie to the man who would later become her husband, Prince Andrew. Fergie and Andrew met at the Royal Ascot in 1985 and married just a year later.
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Reader’s Digest has published hundreds of stories on the British royal family, providing a behind-the-scenes look at the fascinating facets of the monarchy. We regularly cover topics including the latest royal news, the history and meaning behind time-honored traditions, and the everyday quirks of everyone’s favorite family members, from Queen Elizabeth’s daily snack to Prince William’s confessions about his home life. We’re committed to producing high-quality content by writers with expertise and experience in their field in consultation with relevant, qualified experts. We rely on reputable primary sources, including government and professional organizations and academic institutions as well as our writers’ personal experiences where appropriate. For this piece on Princess Diana facts, Astrid Hofer tapped her experience as a London-based journalist with more than 20 years of experience covering topics including the British royal family. We verify all facts and data, back them with credible sourcing and revisit them over time to ensure they remain accurate and up to date. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
Sources:
- Richard Fitzwilliams, royal expert; phone interview, Aug. 26, 2025
- Spare by Prince Harry
- Dancing with Diana by Anne Allan
- The Guardian: “‘The audience gasped when Princess Diana appeared'”
- The New York Times: “Lady Diana won’t vow to obey Charles”
- BBC: “Panorama interview with Princess Diana”
- Woman & Home: “Princess Diana’s ‘inferiority complex’ after failing school exams was one of her biggest ‘problems,’ says royal expert”
- CNN: “Princess Diana’s former London apartment is now an official tourist site”
- Cosmopolitan: “Who were Princess Diana’s flatmates (and where are they now)?”
- Entertainment Tonight: “Duran Duran reveals Princess Diana’s favorite song of theirs”
- Vanity Fair: “The Crown: Did Princess Diana really roller-skate through the palace?”
- Newsweek: “Did Queen Elizabeth II try to stop Princess Diana’s HIV/AIDS work?”
- Independent: “The extraordinary history of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew’s relationship”
