Isabelle Caro, Anorexic Model, Brought Jessica Simpson to Tears

NEW YORK (CBS/AP) Isabelle Caro, the model whose death after a long struggle with anorexia was made public on Wednesday, brought Jessica Simpson to tears earlier this year during an appearance on the singer's VH1 series, "The Price of Beauty."

Caro, a French actress and model who was featured in an Italian ad campaign in 2007 that showed her naked, vertebrae and facial bones protruding under the headline "No Anorexia," died on Nov. 17 at the age of 28.

[Watch her appearance on "The Price of Beauty" below.]

Caro told Simpson that she weighed only 86 pounds when a fashion designer told her she had to lose weight to model.

"To us, what you're doing right now makes you one of the most beautiful people that we have ever seen," Simpson told Caro, referring to her anorexia-awareness work. "And we really just appreciate you sitting in front of us and having such powerful words. God bless you."

Caro said on her blog and in interviews that she had suffered from anorexia since she was 13. She wrote a book published in France in 2008 titled "The Little Girl Who Didn't Want to Get Fat." In later interviews, she said she weighed about 27 kilograms, or 59 pounds, when the photos for the Italian ad campaign were taken.

The Italian campaign gained Caro widespread media attention in countries around Europe and in the United States. She subsequently served as a member of the jury on Top Model France, and worked periodically as a film and television actress.

"I hope that women all over the world hear Isabelle's story," Simpson said on the show. "I think it's important for women to know that the skinnier you are, doesn't make you more beautiful."