Her daughter, Sky News broadcaster Anna Botting, revealed she had lost her beloved mother following a short illness, just three days after her birthday in September.

A pioneer in both journalism and business, Louise helped transform the way financial news and household spending was explained to ordinary Britons. 

'A super-smart trailblazer, from Radio 4's Money Box to the rare sight of a woman on the board of a FTSE 100 company, you were a pioneer of your era. So, so proud. Missing you so much,' her daughter, the broadcaster Anna Botting, said today.

She added: 'My mum. You will always be amazing.'

Before either journalism or broadcasting, she had broken into the male-dominated world of the City in the 1960s as a banker. Female financiers and analysts were so rare that her firm, Kleinwort Benson, had to build her a women's toilet. 

Louise then made her name on the Daily Mail's Money Mail pages, where from 1972 to 1976 she won a loyal following for her authoritative and accessible writing on household spending, mortgages and investments.

By the time she was chosen to front Money Box in 1977, she had already established herself as one of the country's leading financial journalists.

Louise presented the very first edition of Money Box and remained its defining voice for 15 years. The programme remains on air today and, in 1993, she was awarded a CBE by Sir John Major for services to journalism.

A pioneer for women in business, she later sat on the boards of some of Britain's biggest companies and founded her own successful wealth management consultancy.

The sisters also enjoyed an unexpected boost in popularity at school when Money Box adopted Pink Floyd's iconic 1973 hit Money as its theme tune four years later.

Louise Botting presented the programme until 1992, when she left after being appointed to the board of London Weekend Television.

She had hoped to continue in both roles, but the BBC insisted she could not, claiming it was a conflict of interests.

So she told her bosses at the Beeb: 'Oh well, I'm going. And, by the way, there's a Budget next week.'

Elizabeth Louise Botting was born in Liverpool in 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, to teacher Edith Young and insurance broker Bobby Young. 

Her brother, John, later played rugby for England.

During the war, the family had been evacuated away from Merseyside to North Wales before eventually settling in Sutton Coldfield, where she attended the town's renowned Grammar School for Girls.

Despite losing her father while still a teenager, she won a place at the London School of Economics, graduating in 1961 before embarking on a career in the City at a time when female bankers were an absolute rarity.

At the same time, she was raising her two daughters from her marriage to adventurer Douglas Botting. 

The couple divorced after 21 years, in 1985.

She later married Les Carpenter, the publishing executive who served as chief executive of Reed International and was perhaps best known as the man who sold the Daily Mirror to Robert Maxwell.

Alongside her journalism career, Louise founded wealth management consultancy Douglas Deakin Young with two male partners, using her maiden name, Young. 

The business operated for more than three decades before being acquired by a private bank in 2005 and ultimately becoming part of the Royal Bank of Canada through a series of subsequent takeovers.

After moving from the Daily Mail to the BBC, Louise became renowned for her distinctive broadcasting voice and her ability to make complicated financial matters understandable to millions of listeners.

At its peak, more than three million people tuned in to Money Box each week, and the programme became so influential that successive prime ministers and chancellors were said to be keen to know what would be broadcast before it went on air.

It is now presented by Paul Lewis. 

Yet despite her expertise, she admitted to being something of a technophobe and that her daughters would rib her about it.

While she could explain the complexities of the financial world, she said she felt 'very ill at ease' using cash machines and preferred paying by credit card.

'I've always thought it quite daft to stand in a street in central London, punch information into a machine and then take out a lot of money. It would make me feel very ill at ease,' she said in the 1990s.

After leaving the BBC, she enjoyed considerable success in the boardroom, serving as a director of General Accident, now part of Aviva, until its merger with Norwich Union at the turn of the century.

She also sat on the boards of publisher Trinity Mirror and National Lottery operator Camelot, cementing a career that saw her break barriers in banking, journalism and business alike.