Information from ABC News:
Dolly Parton, the beloved country music superstar known as much for her philanthropy and theme park business as she was for her chart-topping hit songs, has died at 80.
Parton’s death was announced by her publicist. No cause of death was provided.
Parton, who’d turned 80 the previous January, also shared that she was still navigating her grief over the March 2025 death of her husband of nearly 60 years, Carl Dean, saying that she had been taking time since to rebuild herself “spiritually, emotionally and physically.”
In a music career that began when she was still a child, born into poverty in the tiny mountain community of Pittman Center, Tennessee, Parton went on to become one of the world’s most successful and admired entertainers, regarded as a country music living legend. Her trademark style – big blonde hair, flamboyant clothes and makeup – was cultivated early in her career, while she was still in her teens.
Parton’s music style helped her get noticed but her musical gifts made her unforgettable. She wrote and recorded many of country and pop’s most enduring songs, including the hits “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colors” – added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry in 2011 – “Here You Come Again,” “Love Is Like a Butterfly,” “9 to 5” and more.
Parton’s biggest hit, however, was inarguably “I Will Always Love You,” which topped the charts three times, most notably when Whitney Houston’s 1992 cover became a global smash. Houston’s performance remains the best-selling song by a female artist of all time.
A savvy businesswoman, Forbes magazine in June 2025 estimated Parton’s net financial worth at $450 million, placing her No. 78 on their list of America’s wealthiest self-made women. In addition to her extensive publishing catalog – Parton was careful to retain ownership of the songs she wrote, the recordings of which number over 1,000 – the bulk of her wealth came from her Dollywood theme park and other entertainment and hospitality holdings under her Dollywood Company.
When wildfires in 2016 ravaged the Great Smoky Mountains in Eastern Tennessee, where she grew up, Parton created a fund that gave $1,000 a month for six months to some 900 families affected by the fires to help them get back on their feet, and also organized a telethon to raise money for the fires’ victims. Four years later, Parton donated $1 million to Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center to help fund the search for a COVID-19 vaccine, and later urged Americans to get vaccinated against the virus in a video that showed her receiving the shot as she sang her hit “Jolene,” with the refrain updated to “vaccine.”
Parton was one of only 17 people to be inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a rarified list that also includes fellow greats Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and Ray Charles; with Brenda Lee, Parton was one of only two female artists so honored. She was one of fewer still artists inducted into the Country, Rock and Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame.
