In reply to eddie6655: A very nice set up would be a canon 60D with a canon 15-85 lens. Big range, well built but reasonably light camera that is a bit nicer than the 600/650D and the lens will blow the kit lens out of the water.
A slightly cheaper option would be something like this
http://www.hdewcameras.co.uk/canon-eos-60d-double-kit-18-5555-250-817-p.asp or the 650D with the same lens bundle but the 650D is not as nice a camera unless you mainly do filming with it. Both lenses are decent and not very heavy which is something lots of novices will appreciate. These two lenses are far from the best but it a good place to start to work from.
Even better would be a 6D with a 24-105 lens but that will be on the wrong side of £2000 with all the bits whereas the other two can be had for a third to half of that
Get her a nice fairly discreet bag, f-stop make a few nice ones that don't scream camera bag like the lowepro ones do.
If she wants to get the most out of the camera she will want to shoot in RAW format which will require a bit of work on the computer but the images can be tweaked so much more. If that is the case she will want a 32 or two 16gb memory cards probably, depends how trigger happy she is. Buy a decent quality one though. If she is only going to shoot jpeg which won't require any tinkering on the computer a 16gb one will be enough for most things.
Tripod is nice to have but far from essential, a good tripod will set you back £150 and upwards and the question is whether she'd ever lug it anywhere?
The only cleaning kit you need is a micro fiber cloth, any more serious cleaning than that she will need some reading up on and it might be better to get the stuff when it is actually needed.
All this is assuming she wants a DSLR but that would be the natural choice if she is interested in getting into photography. The Nikon side of things I don't know much about I'm afraid. If you give us a budget I'm sure we can offer a bit more advice.
