Bob Guccione, who founded Penthouse magazine and created an erotic corporate empire around it, only to see it crumble as his investments soured and the world of pornography turned toward video and the internet, has died. He was 79.

A statement issued by the Guccione family said he died at Plano Specialty Hospital in Plano, Texas. His wife, April Dawn Warren Guccione, said he had battled lung cancer for several years.

Penthouse reached the pinnacle of its popularity in September 1984, when it published nude pictures of Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America.

Ms Williams, now a singer and actress, was forced to relinquish her crown after the release of the issue, which sold nearly six million copies and reportedly made $14 million.

A frustrated artist who once attended a Roman Catholic seminary, Mr Guccione started Penthouse in 1965 in England to subsidise his art career and was the magazine’s first photographer.

He introduced the magazine to the American public in 1969 at the height of the feminist movement and the sexual revolution. Penthouse quickly posed a challenge to Hugh Hefner’s Playboy by offering a mix of tabloid journalism with provocative photos of nude women, dubbed Penthouse Pets.