Instead of offering advice that won't have much resonance for a severely depressed person (and this advice isn't something she doesn't know already, because she does know it, but just can't "live it" - depression does that to a person - makes you feel like you are swimming in molasses and everything is foggy and fuzzy and the world is upside down), and instead of spending time thinking about and asking strangers about what to say to her in an email, why not just spend a little bit of time with the person?
Go and watch a bad tv movie together, or take a pizza and spend an hour with her weeding her front yard, or grab her and go to a state park for a walk, etc. She doesn't need logic, reasoning, preaching, distant writing. She needs someone to bring one human highlight of contact and care to her week/month, in the form of a little bit of easygoing companionship that does not bring up in any way her problems, her fuzzy thinking, her disheveled appearance (unless she mentions them first and asks for help in those areas).
A depressed person is often extremely lonely for this kind of very simple human contact, which paradoxically nearly everyone they know withdraws from them when they develop clinical depression.
Don't take her negativity personally, and don't expect her to pull herself up by the bootstraps before you resume the acquaintanceship.
Even if she says she doesn't want visitors, she probably would be so glad to have you visit her even if just for 15 minutes.
By the way, if you really feel she might be suicidal, have you contacted her parents/siblings about what she has said? Is she getting medical treatment? Is she speaking to a counselor or therapist? Perhaps you can help her make an appointment with one, and go with her and sit in the waiting room for her first session. There may be a point when alerting someone in authority about her suicideal ideation could save her life.
It behooves us to realize that there but for the grace of God could go any of us. We are all much closer to sliding into periods of "mental illness" than we'd like to think. And I think that about 20% of the Western population has one kind of "mental illness" or other, whether or not they are being "treated" for it currently.
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