From an unconventional aristocratic family, she worked with Helmut Lang, Karl Lagerfeld, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen, and Gianni Versace.

[4] She worked for haute couture names like Valentino, and Dior by John Galliano and with photographers Steven Meisel, Bruce Weber, Paolo Roversi, and Tim Walker.

[5] At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, she was one of the British supermodels, with models Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss, walking the runway in the closing ceremony.

She was also directly descended from Bess of Hardwick, a notable figure of Elizabethan English society,[10] and a fourth cousin-once-removed to Diana, Princess of Wales.

[17][18] She also modelled frequently for other influential fashion photographers of the 1990s, including Mario Testino, David Sims and Mark Borthwick.

[12] Priya Elan, writing in her Guardian obituary, credits her, together with Kate Moss and Erin O'Connor, with having "introduced an era of androgyny on the catwalk".

She was a muse for the designers Karl Lagerfeld,[19] Gianni Versace,[18][20] Alexander McQueen, Nicolas Ghesquière, Riccardo Tisci and Victoria Beckham.

[12][19] Tennant married French photographer and osteopath David Lasnet in the village of Oxnam, Roxburghshire, on 22 June 1999.

[29] In August 2014, Tennant was one of 200 celebrities who signed a letter to The Guardian newspaper expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.