And when Smith laughed, friends said, she was never embarrassed to lose inhibitions.

“She would just guffaw. She was not ruled by social convention,” one friend said.

A Sense of Style

Not only was Smith beautiful, but friends said she also had a talent for recognizing beauty in unlikely places.

Even her more casual acquaintances remembered her fashionable dress.

“She was always so cutely dressed, super-fashionable,” said Natalia B. Bedoya ’04, who attended Italian class with Smith and said that even during last week’s snowstorms, she would still come to class dressed to the nines.

“She could walk into a Salvation Army store and come out looking like she had been in Dolce & Gabbana,” one friend said.

When Smith carried her 69-cent purse, it was mistaken for a Fendi.

Although Smith had not decided on a future career, her friends said she talked about working in high-end fashion or becoming a talk show host.

“She didn’t want people to judge her goals,” a friend said. “But you knew she was going to do something cool.”

“I can’t imagine her doing anything that didn’t involve people,” said Winthrop House Senior Tutor Courtney B. Lamberth.

A Meeting of Cultures

Friends said Smith’s ability to bring people together came from her diverse upbringing.

Born on Dec. 28, 1982, in Mombasa, Kenya, while her parents were on vacation there, Smith spent her first eight years in Somalia and then moved to Luxembourg, where she graduated from the European School of Luxembourg. Her family moved to France after she came to Harvard in the fall of 2000.

“There was a very rich meeting of culture between her Somali mother’s background and her Danish father’s,” said Winthrop House Master Paul D. Hanson. “She was very deliberate about gaining a deeper understanding of her twin backgrounds.”