Diane Terman Felenstein, who represented celebrities as a publicist before gaining renown herself with a best-selling financial advice guide for women, died on Dec. 8 at her home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She was 79.

The cause was complications of ovarian cancer, her husband, Marshall Felenstein, said.

Ms. Terman Felenstein had been running her own public relations company when her interest in personal finance was sparked. While on a flight she read an article about the Beardstown Ladies, a group of women in their 60s and 70s who had formed an investment club, named after their Illinois town, and written two best-selling books about their stock-market returns. (A lawsuit later revealed that their gains had been more modest than claimed.)

The Beardstown Ladies focused on picking stocks, but for Ms. Terman Felenstein, what resonated was the idea that women should be knowledgeable about finances to help safeguard their futures.

“I was raised in a generation where women counted on men to handle the finances,” she later wrote in her own book. “I considered personal finance, even my own, to be the world’s most boring topic.”