London (CNN) -- Amid the massive global interest in Amanda Knox's appeal against her murder conviction in Italy, it's easy to overlook the victim, British exchange student Meredith Kercher.
Her friends and family are determined to keep her memory alive. "I want people to remember Meredith for the good times she had in Perugia, not just the horrible ending," said Natalie Hayward, who got to know the 21-year-old before her death.
"She was very generous and open and had a very big heart. She was a very fulfilled human being. She was happy and talked about her family all the time. She had lived life to the full. That gives me a great deal of comfort."
Kercher was just 21 when she was killed in 2007 in the villa she rented with Knox in the central Italian university town of Perugia. Her body was semi-naked and her throat had been slashed.
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Kercher was a third-year student at the University of Leeds focusing on European Studies when she got the chance to live in Perugia for a year to study European Politics and Italian.
She worked at Gatwick Airport, near her home in Coulsdon, a dormitory town south of London, to raise money for the trip. Her father John told the Daily Telegraph: "She fought so hard to get out there. There were quite a few setbacks but she was determined to go and kept persisting and eventually got what she wanted."
Her family later described how she was "excited at the prospect of spending the year studying there to improve her language skills, make new friends and immerse herself in the culture. She was pursuing her dream."
She moved into a shared apartment with Knox but tensions mounted between the two young women, according to Hayward, who met Kercher in September 2007.
Hayward told the Sunday Telegraph that Kercher, known to her friends as "Mez," became "frustrated" by Knox's refusal to do cleaning and was unhappy that her flatmate kept a sex toy on open display in a bathroom cabinet.
Kercher, the youngest of four children, had a good sense of humor, according to her family, and "a sense of the ridiculous." While growing up she was interested in poetry, gymnastics and ballet.
The Kercher family has largely avoided the media, but her India-born mother Arline gave an interview to Italian television show Porta a Porta in September in which she described Meredith's love of life.
She said her daughter was a "very loving child, a very sweet girl." She said: "She was always ready to help you. I will never, ever forget her."
Her father John, a freelance journalist, wrote in Britain's Daily Mirror newspaper about the moment he learned the British student killed in Perugia was his daughter. He'd spoken to her the day before.
"I drop the phone," he wrote, " I don't believe it and think there must be a mistake. But I know it's probably true. I can't cry. I'm numb with shock."
He also told about hearing that some of Meredith's friends planned to lay flowers at her old school after her death.
Expecting just a few, he and Arline arrived to find more than 70 people, some having come from around the country. "It's unbelievably touching," John Kercher recalled.
"Meredith is not only a terrible loss to her family and friends, she is also a huge loss to the world," he said.
Richard Ottaway, the member of parliament for Coulsden, was taken aback by Meredith's funeral at Croydon Minster. "It was packed and overflowing," he told CNN. "It was quite clear Meredith was a popular girl ... so many friends there. It was the perhaps moving service I have ever been to."
The priest who took the service described how Meredith's parents dealt with that emotionally charged day. "They were very, very courageous," said Canon Colin Boswell, vicar of Croydon. "They had great dignity and calm sort of dignity which they maintained right up until now."
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