Quote:
Originally Posted by hammerfan
There's a rumor going around the Internet that Whitney Houston died.
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Confirmed.
Whitney Houston, as famous for her golden voice as she was for the troubles that plagued her personal life, has died.
She was 48.
Her publicist, Kristen Foster, confirmed the singer's death Saturday only hours before Houston was due to perform at music mogul Clive Davis's annual pre-Grammy party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
"I can confirm that Whitney Houston was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. We received a call at 3:43 p.m. from hotel security and Beverly Hills fire and police responded minutes later," Beverly Hills Police Lieutenant Mark Rosen tells PEOPLE. "Someone in her entourage found her unresponsive in her room ... It's unclear who notified hotel staff because she has quite an entourage here at the hotel. We attempted to resuscitate her, to no avail."
As to whether there was any evidence of drugs or foul play, Rosen responded: "At this time, there's no obvious evidence of foul play or cause of death."
Born in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of '60s pop diva Dionne Warwick (and the late Dee Dee Warwick) and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin first started singing in the church as a child. In her teens, Whitney sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling.
Around the same time, she joined her mother singing in New York City nightclubs, which helped her catch the ear of Clive Davis. Clive Davis first heard Houston perform. Houston's debut album, Whitney Houston, was produced by Davis and released in 1985, selling millions of copies. Among the hits off of it were "Saving All My Love for You," "How Will I Know," ''You Give Good Love" and "The Greatest Love of All."
Two years later, songs like "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and "Where Do Broken Hearts Go," both topped the charts, and by 1992 she rose to the ranks of Hollywood stardom opposite Kevin Costner in the runaway hit
The Bodyguard.
But Houston's considerable talent was often overshadowed by her struggles with addiction and her widely chronicled marriage to her bad-boy husband.
In 2010, Houston opened up about the darker side of her life, admitting to Oprah Winfrey that by the time she was working with Denzel Washington on The Preacher's Wife in 1996, drugs were a routine part of her life. She went to rehab twice before getting clean, she told Winfrey.
In May 2011, her rep said Houston was once again receiving help for drug and alcohol abuse.
The status of her health in recent weeks had been open to discussion, though she appeared to be on a comeback trail as far as the movies were concerned. After a more than 15-year hiatus from the big screen, Houston recently filmed
Sparkle, due to arrive in theaters Aug. 10, with Jordin Sparks.
In 1992, she married former New Edition member Bobby Brown.
She and Brown, who had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina, in 1993, divorced in 2007. Houston went to rehab twice and said she was drug-free in 2010.