Police have issued an appeal to discover the identity of a woman found dead in a stream in the Yorkshire Dales 14 years ago.

The woman, who was south-east Asian in appearance, was found by walkers on the popular Pennine Way near Pen-y-ghent in North Yorkshire, on 20 September 2004.

Now North Yorkshire police have made a new Facebook appeal in Thai, Filipino and English and are asking for the messages to be shared in the UK and abroad.

Detectives believe the woman had been in the UK for at least two years, and most likely lived in Lancashire, Cumbria or the western part of the Yorkshire Dales. She could have originally been from countries including the Philippines, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.

When she died, she was probably aged between 25 and 35 years old and had black hair, cut above the shoulder. She was quite short – about 1.5 metres (4ft 11ins) tall.

The woman wore a wedding ring and is believed to have had children or been pregnant in the past. She is known to have shopped at Marks & Spencer. She was wearing size-12 clothing at the time of her death but may have been slimmer in previous years.

A postmortem could not establish the cause of the woman’s death. Global appeals,collaboration with foreign embassies and a feature on the BBC’s Crimewatch failed to discover her identity.

At the time, police carried out house-to-house inquires in the area, sent witness appeal letters in a variety of languages to local holiday accommodation and questioned walkers using the Pennine Way. They also investigated every sighting of women matching her description in the Yorkshire Dales since 1 August 2004 and combed missing persons records.

Adam Harland, of North Yorkshire police’s cold case review unit, said: “It has been 14 years since this woman’s body was found in the Yorkshire Dales and despite extensive inquiries in this country and abroad, she has not been identified. It’s possible that she was last in contact with others in 2004, and people in the UK may well have been told that she had gone back home around that time.

“That’s why we’re particularly asking people with links to the south-east Asian community to get involved by sharing our appeal with their friends and relatives. We’ve set up a community group on Facebook to allow them to do just that, so please join if you think you can help.”