Christine Keeler, who in the early 1960s was at the center of a sensational political scandal in Britain, known as the Profumo affair, that played a role in the downfall of a Conservative government, died on Monday in Farnborough, England. She was 75.

Her son Seymour Platt announced her death on his Facebook page, saying she had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“My mother, Christine Keeler, fought many fights in her eventful life,” Mr. Platt wrote, “some fights she lost but some she won. She earned her place in British history but at a huge personal price.”

Ms. Keeler was the “party girl” — as she was often described — who had an affair with John Profumo, a star in the Conservative government of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. The secretary of state for war at the time — some saw him as a future prime minister — Mr. Profumo had met Ms. Keeler at a party in 1961, when she was still a teenager and he was in his mid-40s.