Australia’s first female recipient of a Michelin star, restaurateur and chef Skye Gyngell, has died from a rare skin cancer at the age of 62.

Her heartbroken family issued a statement overnight.

‘We are deeply saddened to share news of Sky Gyngell’s passing on 22nd November in Londonsurrounded by her family and loved ones,’ they said.

‘Skye was a culinary visionary who influenced generations of chefs and growers globally to think about food and its connection to the land.

‘She leaves behind a remarkable legacy and is an inspiration to us all.’

Gyngell passed away following a fight with Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare and fast-growing skin cancer diagnosed when she found a lump on her neck in April 2024.

In a May piece for the Financial Times, Gyngell said she cried after being told treatment would likely strip her of taste and smell.

It wasn’t fear for her career, she wrote, but the sadness that she might lose her ability to enjoy food, asking, ‘Who am I without my palate?’

British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver led tributes for Gyngell.

‘She was an amazing woman and incredible cook and kind hearted,’ Oliver wrote.

‘She will be very, very, very missed. Thank you for all you did to inspire young cooks.’

Gyngell was the daughter of legendary broadcaster Bruce Gyngell and his first wife, interior designer Ann Gyngell (née Barr), whose death was confirmed only days before her daughter’s.

News of her mother’s death was was shared publicly by Channel Nine presenter Leila McKinnon, who is married to Gyngell’s brother, David Gyngell.

Born in Sydney in 1963, Gyngell trained in France and later worked in London before becoming head chef at Petersham Nurseries Café in Richmond when it opened in 2004.

She earned a Michelin star for the restaurant seven years later – the first and still the only Australian woman to do so.

She went on to become culinary director at Heckfield Place in 2012 and two years later opened her own celebrated restaurant, Spring, at Somerset House.

Alongside her restaurant work, Gyngell published several cookbooks and contributed widely to food writing.

Her friend and contributor to the New York Times David Prior described Gyngell as the ‘most internationally significant Australian female chef of her generation.’

‘Skye was singular. She had the palate of a chef and the palette of an artist, and those twin, exquisite gifts met in food,’ he said.

‘She carried an ethereal, mercurial lightness that often belied the grit and unwavering purity of vision that saw her rewrite the rule book of dining in London than once.’