A DANCER who taught Oxford University students in the 1920s has died aged 104.

Ruby Prince ran a school which was one of only two licensed to teach dance to Oxford undergraduates.

It began when she lived above the Victoria Arms in Jericho, where her parents were the publicans and which was a regular haunt for students as much then as it is now.

Lessons would take place at a number of the colleges around Oxford where she would hire a room to teach her pupils the latest moves.

To be in vogue with all things Russian, she reversed her maiden name of Foster to set up the Ruby Retsof School of Dance.

She would make regular visits to London to meet Americans to learn the latest dances and teach them to her students.

After getting married she gave up teaching people to dance but took it up again when the family moved to Wallingford, where she ran another dance school teaching many of the town’s children.

Ruby Foster was born on November 20, 1909 in Oxford.

She grew up above the Victoria Arms and left school aged 14 before going to the Muriel Lane School of Dance where she trained as a ballet and ballroom dance teacher.

In 1935 she married Alfred Prince, a fourth-generation rose grower from Longworth who she met when he was delivering roses in Oxford.

They married in St Paul’s Church in Walton Street and moved to Longworth.

After a year and a half they moved to Wallingford where they established a new rose nursery – though when her children were old enough she set up her new dance school.

She ran the school for about a decade and after that concentrated on the family rose-growing business with her husband, who died in 1978.

In 1981 she moved to Martock in Somerset to be closer to her daughters.

Ruby Prince died on November 28 and her funeral will take place at Yeovil Crematorium on December 13.

She is survived by her three children, Dianne, Yvonne and Timothy, as well as four grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.