Micheline Charest, the 51-year old co-founder of the troubled animation company Cinar, died Wednesday afternoon.

She underwent plastic surgery at a private clinic in Montreal Tuesday. During recovery from the seven-hour procedure, she experienced complications. She died at Notre-Dame Hospital.

There's no word on the type of cosmetic surgery she had been undergoing.

Cosmetic surgeon Dr. Marietta Zorn told CTV Newsnet that deaths from cosmetic surgery are rare but can occur during long surgeries.

"The risky surgeries tend to be the ones that require a long anesthetic time, such as a face-lift, because the patient is immobile for a period of time and you always worry about clotting of the veins, which can lead to complications with regard to breathing," she says.

Charest and her partner Ronald Weinberg were once a power couple in the entertainment industry. They founded Cinar, an award-winning animation company that produced such popular children's TV shows as "Arthur" and "Caillou."

The Hollywood Reporter once named her the 19th most-powerful woman in Hollywood, ahead of Madonna and Barbra Streisand.

But the company unravelled in 2000 when it became mired in a financial scandal after it was discovered that $122 million US of the company's money had been invested in Bahamian hedge funds without the approval of the board of directors.

The company's shares plunged, shareholders sued, and Charest and Weinberg were ousted.

The Quebec Securities Commission in March fined them $1 million each and barred them from managing any Canadian company for five years. They never admitted wrongdoing.

Charest worked briefly for the Just For Laughs comedy festival before retiring from business last year.

Charest sold her shares in Cinar last month around the time a Toronto-based investor group struck a takeover deal last month worth $143.9 million US.

Charest and Weinberg had two children.