The Italian-German actress – who had kids Marlon, 47, and Angela, 45, with the 73-year-old rocker, as well as son Tara, who died aged just 10 weeks in 1976 – passed away aged 75 on Tuesday (13.06.17), but the cause of her death has not yet been revealed.
Sources told the Daily Mirror newspaper that Keith – who also has two children with wife Patti Hansen – was there for Anita in her final months, cared about her enormously and was “completely devastated” by her death.
Anita’s close friend, Stella Schnabel, has posted a picture of them together on Instagram and paid an emotional tribute to her pal.
She wrote: “I have never met a woman quite like you Anita. I don’t think there is anybody in this universe like you. No one has ever understood me so well. You showed about life and myself and how to grow and become and exist with it all.
“I was a little girl thinking I was big but I became a woman through knowing you. The secret lyrical you. My best friend. “The greatest woman I have ever known. Thank you for the most important lessons – because they are ever changing and definitive. Like you. We are all singing for you, how you liked it.
“Go in peace my Roman mother, you will always be in my heart.”
Anita met the Rolling Stones in 1965 when she and a friend snuck backstage at one of their concerts in Germany. She initially embarked on a romance with guitarist Brian Jones – who died in 1969 – but as he grew increasingly abusive, she left him for Keith.
The pair had a turbulent relationship and split in 1980 and the ‘Brown Sugar’ musician later claimed the ‘Barbarella’ actress – who was the band’s muse and sang backing vocals on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ – had had an affair with the group’s frontman Sir Mick Jagger.
Anita and Keith lived a wild partying life together, but the ‘Candy’ actress later insisted she didn’t regret the hedonistic period.
She said in 2008: “I don’t think they were lost years. I went about doing what I did, travelling anyway, even if sometimes they had to carry me. Self-medication they call it now. I went into this – what do they call it before you become a butterfly? – cocoon for a long time. And in a way it’s kept me probably more childlike; that’s what drugs do to people, they stop emotional growth, so when you come out of it you’re kind of 17.”