Cancer charities last night hailed the declining figures as evidence that new treatments and the wholesale reorganisation of services are at last beginning to yield results.
But while Britain has dropped from the top of the European league of death rates, it remains in the uneviable position of sixth worst out of 28 countries.
It means survival rates are better in 21 other Euroeapn countries including Romania, Estonia and the Czech Republic.
Breast cancer still kills 12,000 women in Britain every year.
British women remain far more likely to die of the disease than their Spanish, Scandinavian or Italian counterparts.
Researchers in Northern Ireland, France, Italy and Norway compared mortality rates from breast cancer, as recorded on death certificates, from countries across western and central Europe.
Their analysis, published in the British Medical Journal, found British mortality rates from the disease dropped from 41.6 deaths per 100,000 women per year in 1989, to 28.2 per 100,000 in 2006. Only Iceland saw a faster decline.
Between 1993 and 2008 the number of deaths dropped from 14,799 to 12,047 – while the number of newly diagnosed cases rose from 40,451 to 45,695.
Anna Gavin, director of the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry, who co-authored the report, said: “Even though cases are going up, death rates are going down.
“In the last 20 years there has been massive investment. There are now new ways of treating the cancers that are targeted to individual patients.
“The treatment that people are getting in the NHS are as good as in other countries and we are now starting to see some of the benefit of that.”
Hilary Tovey, policy manager at Cancer Research UK, said the research highlighted the “great progress” made since 1990.
Death rates were “relatively high” in the 1980s, she noted, but added: “Reorganising breast cancer services, screening, improved awareness and better treatments made possible as a result of excellent research, all have their role to play.”
The study throws up a conundrum: how come death rates in Britain have fallen so steeply while breast cancer survival rates have remained lower than the European average?
In an accompanying editorial in BMJ, two Oxford University epidemiologists argue UK survival rates “seem significantly worse than they really are” because registration of cancers is not statutory in Britain.
Consequently, the disease has often only been officially recorded at a relatively late stage.
Recent analysis by Cancer Research UK also indicates that 10 year surivival rates for breast cancer have almost doubled since the 1970s, from 40 to 77 per cent.
Nonetheless, problems remain.
Women in Britain are still 50 per cent more likely to die of breast cancer than those in Spain.
Dr Gavin said this was partially explained by historical lifestyle factors such as the higher prevalence of breastfeeding in Spain the 1960s and 1970s and healthier diet.
But there continue to be serious questions over the availability of treatment and the rationing of anti-cancer drugs.
Dr Emma Pennery, clinical director of the charity Breast Cancer Care, said: “It is important to remember that while mortality rates may be decreasing nearly 46,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancer in the UK every year and rely on the support of charities and the NHS.”