The Seattle house where rock singer Kurt Cobain killed himself almost three years ago is to be sold by his widow, actor and singer Courtney Love.

The mansion has become a place of pilgrimage for thousands of teenage fans of the late Nirvana singer and Love fears for the safety of their four-year-old daughter, Frances Bean, according to a British newspaper.

Love, 31, who is the lead singer of the rock band Hole and recently launched a Hollywood career, also blamed her own growing celebrity status in an interview with the Independent on Sunday Review.

"I have to sell my house, which really makes me mad," she told the newspaper.

"I have a nice house but I can't live there. Kids are everywhere all the time."

Teenage fans from around the world have traveled to see the greenhouse - cum - conservatory where the tormented Cobain shot himself in April 1994 at the age of 27, following a long struggle with drugs and depression.

Two years ago, Love told Vanity Fair magazine that she would never sell the house, where she kept relics of her husband's body - including a lock of his bleached blond hair - on an altar.

She had turned down a $4 million Japanese offer for the house, she told the magazine at the time.

The house could now attract as much as $8 million from wealthy Nirvana fans, music industry executives or business people hoping to cash in on its value as a shrine to Kurt Cobain.

Love told the Independent on Sunday she planned to buy a farm outside Seattle and to base herself in Los Angeles, where she is pursuing a film career.

She has received critical acclaim for her role in The People Vs Larry Flynt as the wife of the US porn publisher.