Marks & Spencer has signed up Martha Lane Fox, the co-founder of internet travel site lastminute.com, as its youngest non-executive director.

Stuart Rose, chief executive of the retailer, said that he hoped that Ms Fox, 34, who set up one of the few online ventures to survive the dot-com crash, would help to advise on the development of M&S’s internet store.

The young entrepreneur’s arrival at M&S is one of her most high-profile moves since she nearly died when a car she was travelling in overturned on a coastal road in Morocco.

The daughter of an Oxford academic, Ms Lane Fox, together with Brent Hoberman, founded lastminute.com in 1998.

She stepped down as managing director in 2003 but remained as a nonexecutive until 2005 when the business was sold, to Sabre Holdings, for £577 million. With an estimated £13.5 million in her pocket from the deal, Ms Fox was rumoured to be in line to run Selfridges, the London department store.

This came to nothing and instead she planned a six-month sabbatical, to travel, relax and find a boyfriend.

Ms Lane Fox was educated at Westminster School and went on to study ancient and modern history at Oxford University’s Magdalen College.

She joined Spectrum Strategy Consultants, a management consultancy to the media and telecom industries, in 1994.

After three years at the firm, during which time she did some work on pay television, she left to join Carlton Communications but left the following year to set up lastminute.

While recovering from her accident, Ms Fox has invested some of her money in Lucky Voice, a karaoke bar in Soho.

She is also a board member of Channel 4 and a trustee of Reprieve, a prison reform charity.

Ms Fox may be the company’s youngest non-executive, but its youngest board member was Simon Marks, son of the founder, who became chairman of the company in 1911, at the tender age of 23.

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