Paula Frías Allende was the daughter of Chilean

Chilean people

Chilean people, or simply Chileans, are the native citizens and long-term immigrants of Chile. Chileans are mainly of Spanish and Amerindian descent, with small but significant traces of 19th and 20th century European immigrant origin...

-American

People of the United States

The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

, Isabel Allende Llona. Her grandfather was a first cousin of Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....

, President of Chile from 1970 to 1973.

Life

Paula worked as a humanitarian for impoverished

Poverty

Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...

 communities located in Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

 and Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, using her skills as an educator and psychologist

Psychologist

Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...

. She married Ernesto Diaz in Venezuela, in 1991.

Illness and death

Paula was only twenty-eight years old when she died in 1992. She went into a coma after complications of the disease porphyria

Porphyria

Porphyrias are a group of inherited or acquired disorders of certain enzymes in the heme bio-synthetic pathway . They are broadly classified as acute porphyrias and cutaneous porphyrias, based on the site of the overproduction and accumulation of the porphyrins...

 had hospitalised her. In 1991, an error in medication resulted in severe brain damage, leaving her in a persistent vegetative state

Persistent vegetative state

A persistent vegetative state is a disorder of consciousness in which patients with severe brain damage are in a state of partial arousal rather than true awareness. It is a diagnosis of some uncertainty in that it deals with a syndrome. After four weeks in a vegetative state , the patient is...

. Her mother had her moved to a hospital in California where she died on 6 December 1992.

Foundation and novel

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean writer with American citizenship. Allende, whose works sometimes contain aspects of the "magic realist" tradition, is famous for novels such as The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts , which have been commercially successful...

 started the Isabel Allende Foundation on December 9, 1996, in homage to her daughter. Her autobiographical book Paula

Paula (novel)

Paula is a 1995 memoir written by Isabel Allende. She intended to write a straightforward narrative about the darkest experience of her life...

is dedicated to her. The foundation is "dedicated to supporting programs that promote and preserve the fundamental rights of women and children to be empowered and protected."