A statement from her publisher, Harper Collins, said she "passed away peacefully at her London home in the early hours of this morning".
Her best-known works include The Golden Notebook, Memoirs of a Survivor and The Summer Before the Dark.
She became the oldest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature when in 2007 she won the award for her life's work aged 88.
Jonathan Clowes, her long-time friend and agent, said she was "a wonderful writer with a fascinating and original mind", BBC reported.
"It was a privilege to work for her and we shall miss her immensely."
"Doris Lessing was a one of the great writers of our age," said Charlie Redmayne, CEO of Harper Collins UK, the report added.
Lessing is survived by her daughter Jean and granddaughters Anna and Susannah.
Born in what is now Iran, she moved to Zimbabwe as a child before settling in England in 1949.
Her debut novel The Grass is Singing was published in 1950 and she made her breakthrough with The Golden Notebook in 1962.
On winning the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy described Lessing as an "epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny".
After learning she had won the award, she said she was "very glad" but recalled that in the 1960s she had been told the Nobel Prize committee did not like her and she would never win one, BBC reported.
Image: British novelist Doris Lessing smiles as she poses with her Nobel Prize for Literature at the Wallace Collection in London, January 30, 2008
Photograph: Toby Melvilee/Reuters
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