Three years ago she wed shock rocker Marilyn Manson - a union that lasted a year.

With their matching black locks and lipsticks, they were to celebrity what Posh and Becks might have been had they gone over to the dark side.

Dita came to prominence in the UK five years ago when Jade Jagger, having spotted her dancing in one of Manson's videos, invited her to perform at the relaunch party for Garrard, the royal jeweller, and from that moment her fame has soared.

She earned more than $2million last year, "but that's not to say it's been champagne all the way", she adds.

"It hasn't been easy. In 1993 I was working in a bar full of truckers - and I must have looked like an alien to them."

Raised in Michigan, Heather Sweet was the middle of three daughters.

She had grown up entranced by the glamour of old Hollywood: "I loved the costumes, the stockings, the girdles."

By the time she was 15, Heather went to school in stockings and suspender belts - a factor that must have made her popular with the boys.

"Actually, it didn't," she laughs.

"I was quite a grown-up girl and I had one best friend and a boyfriend, so we were the mysterious ones at school without ever really being picked on."

By now, the family had moved to California, although her parents, Ken, a machinist, and Bonnie, a manicurist, separated while she was in her teens.

"I lived with my mum and then with my dad, although we didn't see eye to eye. I was working in a lingerie store, I had a boyfriend and I was independent and my dad didn't really get that. He threw me out when I was 16."

Soon, Heather's blonde hair was snipped and dyed black, as she set about recreating herself in the image she wanted to be.

She wore a corset for ten hours every day for ten years until she was able to get her waist down to an eye-popping 17 inches and worked as a model and exotic dancer.

By 2002, though, her time had finally arrived.