Charity fund-raiser Ann Rose was laid to rest yesterday after a 13-year battle against terminal breast cancer.

More than 150 family and friends, including her husband Tony and children Simon and Michelle, attended her funeral at the Jewish Cemetery in Hove.

They heard Rabbi Jeremy Collick describe Ann, who died on Monday at the age of 55, as an inspiration to others for her work in raising money to fund cancer research.

He likened her to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, saying: "Ann was a masterpiece.

"Her life might have finished, but the work that she started will live on.

"With the money that she, Tony and her friends raised others have been given the chance to live.

"It is a great sadness that she died before the work she supported could help her.

"Ann had been told so many times that she only had a few months left to live. But each time she just ignored it and got on with what she wanted to do.

"This time, though, she knew that it really was the end, and in the last few weeks she set about organising the people she wanted to continue her work."

Ann and Tony, of Third Avenue, Hove, set up the Ann Rose Monte Cancer Challenge after she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.

It has so far raised more than £300,000 to fund research into the causes of the disease.

The money is given to the Institute for Cancer Research, next to the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Surrey, where Ann was a patient.

Learning that she had breast cancer was the third major trauma Ann had faced.

Both her legs and her pelvis were shattered when her car was involved in a crash with a bus, leaving her disabled.

And Tony and Ann's second daughter, Susannah, died suddenly in 1970 aged four months. Ann was buried close to Susannah's grave yesterday.