Helen Gurley Brown | 1922-2012

Helen Gurley Brown in her office at Cosmopolitan in 1985. Brown was at the helm of the magazine for 32 years.  (G. Paul Burnett / Associated Press)

Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan magazine covers often featured women who flaunted substantial cleavage. “I knew women wanted to look at bosom as much as men did, to see how they compared,” Brown once said.  (Marty Lederhandler / Associated Press)

Helen Gurley Brown, second from right, chats with the McGuire Sisters -- Christine, left, Phyllis and Dorothy -- at the Rainbow Room in Rockefeller Center in New York in June 1990. Brown was honored by friends and colleagues for her 25 years of service at the magazine.   (Ed Bailey / Associated Press)

During a promotional event in New York in July 1995, Helen Gurley Brown gets a boost from some of the men included in the magazine’s first Bachelor of the Month calendar.  (Albert Ferreira / Associated Press)

Cosmopolitan editor Helen Gurley Brown in 1996 was honored with a Henry Johnson Fisher Award for lifetime achievement in the magazine industry.  (Mark Lennihan / Associated Press)

Helen Gurley Brown, in her New York office in 1997, holds the February issue of Cosmopolitan -- the last one she edited. By then, Cosmo was selling 2.5 million copies a month.  (Marty Lederhandler / Associated Press)

Helen Gurley Brown and husband David Brown in New York in 1998. David Brown wrote the cover headlines for Cosmopolitan, such as “How to Turn Him On While You Take It Off” and “The Pill That Makes Women More Responsive.”  (Dave Allocca / Associated Press)

Helen Gurley Brown holds her book “I’m Wild Again” in New York City in 2000.   (Chris Hondros / Getty Images)

Rosie O’Donnell and Helen Gurley Brown strike their “Cosmo” poses at a reception before the National Magazine Awards in New York in 2001.  (Richard Drew / Associated Press)

Helen Gurley Brown, shown in 2004, said she always had viewed herself as a feminist. “I was there saying, ‘You’re your own person, go out there and be somebody. You don’t have to get your identity from being somebody’s appendage.”  (Evan Agostini / Getty Images)

Helen Gurley Brown attends the opening reception for the Israeli Film Festival in February 2006 in New York City.  (Amy Sussman / Getty Images)

Director Woody Allen and Helen Gurley Brown greet singer Michael Feinstein at the opening night of Feinstein’s holiday show in New York in November 2007.   (Marion Curtis / Associated Press)