In this article, we generalize the exponential distribution by compounding the extended exponential distribution (Gomez et al., 2014) and generalized exponential distribution (Gupta and Kundu, 2001) and call it modified exponential (ME) distribution. It includes as special submodels,Kumaraswamy exponential, generalized exponential and exponential distributions. We providea comprehensive description of the mathematical properties of the proposed distribution. Theestimation of the model parameters is performed by the maximum likelihood method. A simulation study is performed to assess the performance of the maximum likelihood estimators.The usefulness of the modified exponential distribution for modeling data is illustrated usingreal data set by comparison with some generalizations of the exponential distribution.