Tributes are flowing for former model and deportment icon June Dally-Watkins, who has died in Sydney aged 92.

Dally-Watkins died peacefully in her sleep, according to her family.

In 1950, she established the June Dally-Watkins school, which trained young Australian women in deportment and etiquette.

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She later set up a modelling agency and a business college.

Dally-Watkins was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to business in 1993.

More recently, she taught etiquette to millions of students across China, after co-founding the Dally Institute in Guangzhou in 2013.

Former model and fashion designer Maggie Tabberer described Dally-Watkins as "an amazing woman".

"She taught many young girls how to walk, how to talk, and how to just be the best that they could be. I loved her, and I admired her enormously."

ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose, who has been friends with Dally-Watkins for decades, said: "Every girl in the 70s left school and went to Miss Dally's to learn deportment.

"As well as being a beautiful woman and a model, she was a very smart businesswoman — she just knew how to teach people the art of being elegant, the art of being civilised," she said.

"I think her legacy is to be kind to one another and don't forget to say please and thank you."

A life of good manners

Dally-Watkins was born in Sydney in 1927. An illegitimate child, she was raised in Watsons Creek, north of Tamworth, by her mother and grandparents.

She moved to Sydney at the age of 15 with her mother, who encouraged her career by taking her to department store Farmers and demanding she be paid to model their clothes.

Dally-Watkins was named Model of the Year and the Most Photographed Model of the Year in 1949.

She organised one-woman fashion shows overseas where she rubbed shoulders with Hollywood royalty, including Gregory Peck, whose marriage proposal she turned down.

Dally-Watkins was proud of being a successful business woman while having a family. ( National Portrait Gallery )

She went on to marry naval officer John Clifford in 1953 and, at a time when many women were expected to remain in the home, Dally-Watkins attracted criticism for continuing to work while raising their four children.

"I'd get phone calls from women saying 'You're a terrible mother, go home to your poor, starving children'," Dally Watkins later told SBS.

The couple divorced in 1968.

Dally-Watkins's daughter Lisa Clifford told the Sydney Morning Herald her mother encouraged her to be independent: "Work. Get a job. He might leave you so you must have a career to fall back on."

Other advice was to "look fabulous at all times. When at home, wear casual clothes and look even more fabulous".

Speaking to the ABC in 2018, Dally-Watkins emphasised the importance of good manners and etiquette.

"I think we definitely do [need good etiquette] because the human race should want to present itself in the very best way and be elegant and charming," she said.

"To have good posture, to sit tall and straight instead of sitting at the dinner table like that," she said, posing with her elbow on the table and her chin resting in her hand.

"The only part of you that should go on the table should be your wrist."

According to Dally-Watkins, the true test of whether a young lady had good posture was whether she could successfully carry a book on her head.

June Dally-Watkins died in her sleep. ( ABC News )

Dally-Watkins also lamented the way young people held champagne glasses ("that's why there is a stem, to keep the hot hand away from the cold wine") and considered the use of mobile phones during dinner "disgusting".

She was famous for creating the "Dally stance", in which one foot would be tucked neatly behind the other when standing or sitting.

She told SBS her goal was to "empower" women who did her course to be their best, physically, emotionally and mentally.

"Not only do I want to transform the way they look but the way they think, the way they dream," she said.

Dally-Watkins told the ABC she had been the first Australian woman to own her own car, which she loved to drive around her home town of Watsons Creek, near Tamworth in northern NSW.

She was also proud of being able to continue to run her own business while married with children at a time when that was very rare.

"I felt that a woman had a right to her own life and be their own individual," she said.

'She always had a smile on her face'

Many people have taken to social media to pay tribute to Dally-Watkins and her teachings.

Twitter user @ChaosKittyEM said Dally-Watkins taught "the level of manners you aimed for in our house growing up".

"Due to one of her teachers, I know how to eat a bread roll 'correctly'," she wrote.

"While I've no doubt she wouldn't have been my biggest fan, I'm quite sad we've lost this lady."

Actor Gregory Peck proposed to June Dally-Watkins but was turned down. ( Source: Wikimedia Commons )

An Instagram user wrote about her regular encounters with Dally-Watkins while she was working as a receptionist at her deportment school in Brisbane.

"It was a well-known fact amongst staff that she would hold your elbow as she greeted you, doing a subtle rub to make sure your elbows weren't dry," the Instagram user wrote.

"There was always plenty of moisturiser on hand when we knew she was coming!"

Ms Buttrose said her friend had been "a great believer in the smile … she always had a smile on her face".

She used to tease Dally-Watkins about her decision to turn down Peck, a Hollywood heart-throb.

"He was madly in love with her and I think she was tempted but … she reminded me that she was just a girl from the country," she said.

"I guess it was all too much for her and she wanted to come back here to Australia and forge her career here."

Ms Buttrose said over the years the pair, who had each published books on etiquette, would debate the subject — and did not always agree.

"I remember we had a discussion about people who take their shoes off on planes," Ms Buttrose said.

"I didn't approve. I think she did, which I find astonishing. But never mind — we agreed to disagree."

She last saw Dally-Watkins over lunch a few months ago when "she was in fine form … and there were no signs of any slowing down".

"She had lots of plans for the future and many more trips to China, so this was very unexpected," Ms Buttrose said.

Dally-Watkins is survived by four children, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Her family has asked for privacy and will release the details of her funeral at a later time.