She wasn't considered beautiful in the era due to her red hair. It wasn't seen as desirable but more exotic and unnatural. Her thin figure and red hair made her a target for painters everywhere, asking her to be their model. William Holman Hunt described her as a "stupendously beautiful creature.. Like a Queen, magnificently tall, with a lovely figure, a stately neck, and a face of the most delicate and finished modelling."
She was modelling for painter John Everett Millais, posing in a vintage white wedding dress submerged in a bathtub in an attempt to recreate drowned 'Ophelia', when she got an awful cold and became ill from the cold water. It resulted in her taking laudanum to relieve the pain, but she was soon addicted to it. As her health deteriorated, people said that she grew more beautiful. This led to a Victorian trend of young girls wanting to look deathly and gaunt; they would drink vinegar for weight loss, and stay up late reading to get dark circles under their eyes. They would also drop belladonna in their eyes to achieve the same 'glazed look' Elizabeth Siddal had. These methods to look beautiful even appeared in numerous publications throughout the nineteenth century.
Elizabeth Siddal sadly died after drinking half a bottle of laudanum. She was buried with her husbands poetry, which he apparently several years later claimed.. Whilst digging up her grave a new rumour speculated; that Elizabeth Siddal's beautiful red hair had kept growing after her death and had filled the entire coffin.
Bibliography:
http://blog.bridgemanimages.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/02-Lizzie-Siddal.jpg
Face Paint: The Story of Makeup - Lisa Eldridge pg 60-61
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