The first female US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, has passed away at the age of 84.

According to a statement from her family, Ms Albright died from cancer surrounded by family and friends.

She was described as "a loving mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend...A tireless champion of democracy and human rights."

Just weeks before her appointment as Secretary of State under President Clinton, Albright revealed in an Associated Press interview that she had recently discovered both of her parents were raised Jewish in her native Czechoslovakia.

According to the Jewish Women's archive: "Albright's parents had fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia for Britain during the Second World War. Returning home, Albright's father became a Czech ambassador, but the family fled again when the Czech government fell to a Communist coup."

Despite three of her grandparents being murdered by Nazis, Albright was raised Catholic after he parents converted just four years after she was born. Neither her mother or her father revealed to any of her siblings that they'd been brought up Jewish.

The diplomat, born Marie Jana Korbelova, was a native of Prague who came to the United States in 1948, where she was raised on Long Island.

Her first prominent role in government was as US ambassador to the United Nations, where she served for the first three years of the Clinton administration.

She became an internationally recognised figure during the war in Kosovo and after the war was honoured with the naming of Medlin Olbrajt Square in Prishtinë, Kosovo.

Albright was recognised by successive presidents for her work, and was awarded the USA's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012, from President Barack Obama.