Beloved country music icon, actor, philanthropist and general delight Dolly Parton has died. She was 80.
Parton's nephew, Bryan Seaver, shared the news in a video posted to the star's Instagram account. "I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven't truly felt it until now," he said. "It is an honour, an honour that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness. But the sadness lies with us, not with Dolly. Dolly has lived in the light."
A cause of death has not yet been reported, but Parton is said to have passed away "peacefully" in Nashville, TN.
The fourth of 12 children, Parton was born on the banks of the Little Pigeon River in Pittman Center, TN. Her family moved to a farm on nearby Locust Ridge — a home she would buy back in the 1980s — when she was a young girl, which inspired her '70s song "My Tennessee Mountain Home."
The heavily Pentecostal area saw Parton brought up in the Church of God, beginning to perform in church at age six before broadening her scope to local radio and TV programs. At seven, she began playing a homemade guitar and, a year later, her uncle gave the singer-songwriter her first real guitar.
Parton recorded her first single, "Puppy Love," at age 13 on Goldband Records and appeared at the Grand Ole Opry, where Johnny Cash encouraged her to follow her instincts in pursuing her music career. The day after she graduated from Sevier County High School, she moved to Nashville, where she quickly signed a songwriting deal with Combine Publishing.
Alongside her frequent co-writer Bill Owens, she penned several charting singles for other artists before signing to Monument Records, where she was initially pitched as a bubblegum pop singer due to her soprano. However, after her uncredited composition of "Put It Off Until Tomorrow" with Bill Phillips went to No. 6 on the country chart in 1966, the label relented and allowed Parton to record country music, releasing her debut album Hello, I'm Dolly in 1967.
Spawning multiple Top 40 hits, the album's success led to Parton being invited to join The Porter Wagoner Show — a creative partnership that would catapult her into the national spotlight and land her a solo deal with RCA. She earned her first No. 1 single with "Joshua" in 1971, with the subsequent decade seeing the release of now-classic hits like "Jolene" and "Coat of Many Colors."
When Parton left The Porter Wagoner Show after seven years, her departure inspired one of the greatest songs of all time, "I Will Always Love You," which hit No. 1 on the country charts in both 1974 and 1982 even before Whitney Houston's version for the soundtrack to The Bodyguard had a 14-week stay at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1992.
In 1980, Parton made her cinematic debut alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin in the blockbuster 9 to 5, with the film's theme song also topping numerous charts. Parton went on to appear in other films like The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Rhinestone, Steel Magnolias, Straight Talk and Joyful Noise. During this period, she also recorded the genre-agnostic hit "Islands in the Stream" with Kenny Rogers, and the two toured the world together.
She opened the iconic Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, TN, in 1986, drawing four million visitors annually. This venture allowed Parton to both celebrate her hometown and embrace her entrepreneurial spirit. She also founded the Dollywood Foundation in 1988, which provided scholarships to keep East Tennessee students in school — a mission expanded in 1995 by the establishment of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library, which has donated over 300 million books to children around the world.
Her philanthropy also reached new heights when she made sizeable donations to the creation of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine; even Dr. Evil incarnate Jeff Bezos gave Parton $100 million in 2022 to "do good things." That same year, the singer-songwriter was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame after originally rejecting their nomination because she had never considered herself a rock artist.
To right that wrong, she quite literally reunited the Beatles on her 2023 rock album Rockstar. In 2025, the singer-songwriter paid tribute to her late husband Carl Dean after he died with a song called "If You Hadn't Been There" before her sister Freida requested prayers for the star during a period of unspecified illness. A biographical musical about Parton's life entitled Hello, I'm Dolly will debut on Broadway later this year.
Back in May, Parton provided a health update, saying she was responding really well to meds and treatment for said unspecified illness, possibly related to recurring kidney stones.
A post shared by Dolly Parton (@dollyparton)
