Dolly Parton — the beloved, award-winning icon of American country music — has died. She was 80.
Parton’s nephew, Bryan Seaver, announced the news on Parton’s Instagram on August 25.
“My name is Bryan Seaver, son of Cassie Parton, and I’m representing the Parton and Owens family today, announcing the passing of my aunt, Dolly Rebecca Parton Dean. Sister, Sis, and Granny to one generation and Gigi to the next,” Seaver says in the video.
“This video announcement is something Dolly asked of me years ago, before I fully absorbed it as a future reality,” he continues. “As her head of security for more than two decades, a role my father Larry held before me, I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven’t truly felt it ’til now.”
No cause of death was given. Concerns over Parton’s health arose in September 2025, after the singer postponed and later canceled her Las Vegas residency. The news prompted Parton to share a video a month later to reassure her fans. “I want you to know I’m OK. I’ve got some problems … nothing major,” she said, adding, “I ain’t dead yet.”
On August 21, Parton shared a health update with People, telling the magazine she was dealing with some “health issues.”
“Even though I’m still healin’, I’m still workin’! You know me — as I’ve often said — I’ve dreamed myself into a corner, and I still have so many things I want to achieve, so I’m gonna keep on working as long as I can to see everything come to life.”
The legendary singer-songwriter, famed for her towering hair and razor-sharp wit, topped the Billboard country music charts with 25 of her songs and won 11 Grammys, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 10 Country Music Association Awards, and four People’s Choice Awards.
She also holds a place in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Throughout her life, Parton became a successful businesswoman, actor, philanthropist, and even theme-park owner as she rose to superstardom not just as a country artist but also as a humanitarian and LGBTQ+ advocate.
Parton began giving live performances at age 6
Parton was born in 1946 in a one-room cabin in Pittman Center, Tennessee. She was the fourth of 12 kids and grew up to the sound of Smoky Mountain folklore sung by her mother, Avie Lee Parton.
She often credited her mother and aunt for her musical abilities and her father, Robert Lee Parton, for her business savvy, which she wrote about in her book “Songteller: My Life in Lyrics.” Parton described her family as “dirt poor” in a 2002 CNN interview.
“Although we had no money, I was rich as I could be,” Parton would sing in her hit song “Coat of Many Colors,” inspired by a coat her mother once made from scraps of fabric.
Parton began singing in her church at age 6. She taught herself how to play guitar on a homemade version of the instrument at 7 and got her first real guitar by 8.
Public performances continued throughout Parton’s childhood, culminating in a live show at the Grand Ole Opry at the age of 13, where she met Johnny Cash for the first time.
Parton moved to Nashville the day after she graduated from high school in 1964. On her very first day, she met a young man named Carl Dean at a laundromat. Parton told The New York Times in 1976 that Dean asked her out on a date and she declined, but she invited him to come by while she babysat her nephew.
“He came up every day that week, and we sat out on the porch. I wouldn’t even take him in the house,” she recalled. “Then my aunt got a day off, and she could keep the kid, and that was my first chance to go anywhere with Carl, and he drove me straight to his folks’ house and introduced me to his mother and daddy. ‘Cause he said he knew right the minute he saw me that that’s the one he wanted.”
Two years later, they were married.
Parton’s stint on ‘The Porter Wagoner Show’ shot her to stardom
Parton quickly signed with Combine Publishing and teamed up with her uncle — country singer and songwriter Bill Owens — to produce multiple chart-topping singles.
Her career really took off in the late 1960s, when Parton joined “The Porter Wagoner Show.” The collaboration led to a string of chart-topping singles with Wagoner, who convinced RCA Victor to sign Parton in 1967.
Parton finally hit the top of the charts as a solo artist with her single “Joshua” in 1971. Her success continued with songs like “Coat of Many Colors” and “Touch Your Woman.”
In 1973, Parton earned one of the biggest hits of her career with the song “Jolene,” inspired by a bank teller who had a crush on her husband.
Parton penned the song the same night she wrote “I Will Always Love You,” which became a mega-hit when the late Whitney Houston covered it for the soundtrack to the 1992 film “The Bodyguard.”
“When I wrote those songs, I remember just sitting in the corner of this couch by this fireplace that was in the first house that Carl and I ever owned,” Parton told Business Insider in 2022. “There was just something about that fireplace, the coziness, and that corner. The one corner of the couch where I was always sitting with my feet up, writing and singing my songs.”
Parton tried her hand at the world of pop music
In 1976, Parton began working with Sandy Gallin, who would be her manager for 25 years. With Gallin, Parton co-produced “New Harvest…First Gathering” in 1977. It was the first time she had experimented with pop hits, and the album topped Billboard’s country albums chart and reached No. 71 on the Billboard 200.
Her next album, “Here You Come Again,” released in 1977, became the first of Parton’s solo albums to sell more than one million copies and led her to her first single on the pop charts. Parton continued on the path of pop-crossover success, winning a Grammy Award for best female country vocal performance in 1978.
Throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Parton released hit singles “Baby I’m Burning,” “Islands in the Stream,” and “9 to 5,” which coincided with Parton’s star turn as a working woman trying to take down her sexist boss in the 1980 hit comedy alongside Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
“9 to 5” became Parton’s first song to become a triple No. 1 hit, taking the leading spot in the country, pop, and adult contemporary charts. During this time, she had 12 top-ten hits, six of which went No. 1.
In 1977, Parton met Queen Elizabeth II after performing at the Silver Jubilee.
“I was scared to death that I was not going to know how to curtsy, that I wasn’t going to bend right, but she was just very warm, very sweet, and I could tell she was a very giving person,” Parton recalled during a 2022 interview with Business Insider. “And just meeting the Queen of England, just to meet a queen, it was amazing.”
Parton returned to her roots as a country music icon
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Parton released a wide array of music, ranging from country to pop to bluegrass, solidifying her status as one of the greatest country music artists of all time.
She became a songwriting staple in Hollywood, with many of her 2000s releases accompanying movies, TV shows, or Broadway shows. She also teamed up with stars such as Brad Paisley and Beyoncé to release new music.
In 2014, Parton released “Blue Smoke,” which became her first top-10 album and her highest-ranking solo album ever.
Parton’s first holiday album, “A Holly Dolly Christmas,” was released in October 2020 and was accompanied by a CBS Christmas special of the same name.
Parton was more than a singer-songwriter
In 2009, Parton released “9 to 5: The Musical” on Broadway, a live adaptation of the 1980 film, scored by her famed album. Though the show was not a hit, it earned her a Tony nomination for best original score.
Parton also poured much of her earnings into her own business ventures, put on by The Dollywood Company. Most notably, she opened the Dollywood theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. She focused much of her business near her hometown, opening a dinner theater, a water park, and a spa all in Pigeon Forge.
An avid cook who loved whipping up Southern cuisine, Parton also released two cookbooks, including “Good Lookin’ Cookin’,” which she wrote with her sister Rachel Parton George.
Parton started Sandollar Productions with Gallin, which went on to produce a number of films and TV shows, including “Father of the Bride” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” She also appeared on the other side of the camera, acting on shows such as “Reba,” “The Simpsons,” and “Hannah Montana.”
A tireless multi-hyphenate, Parton told Business Insider in 2022 that she often started her day at 3 a.m.
“I do some of my best work there, but I get enough sleep,” she added. “I don’t require as much sleep as a lot of other people do; that’s kind of a Parton family trait.”
“Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings,” an eight-part docuseries about Parton’s life, aired on Netflix in 2019 and became the subject of the NPR podcast “Dolly Parton’s America.”
A mother figure and philanthropist to many
Parton and Carl Dean never had children due to Parton’s struggle with endometriosis. Instead, the couple helped to raise her younger siblings.
Carl Dean died in March 2025 at the age of 82. He and Parton had been married for nearly 59 years.
Parton was also the godmother to pop star Miley Cyrus. She told Business Insider in 2023 that she hoped Cyrus would play her in a biopic someday.
“I love the fact that she’s brave enough to do whatever she feels like doing,” Parton said of her goddaughter at the time.
Through the Dollywood Foundation, Parton was an active philanthropist for most of her career. She mainly focused on literacy, launching Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library, which mails one book a month to every enrolled child.
She was also known to be an outspoken advocate for the American Red Cross and several HIV/AIDS charities. For her philanthropic efforts, she won awards, including the Association of American Publishers Honors Award for her work in literacy.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Parton donated $1 million toward research at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which funded the early stages of the Moderna vaccine’s development.
She also became a queer icon, frequently advocating for LGBTQ+ rights and equality. In an interview with Larry King in 2016, Parton said, “I do not believe that we should criticize and judge other people. I think we should be accepting and loving. We are all God’s children, we are who we are, and we should be allowed to be who we are.”
In her last interview with Business Insider in 2023, Parton said she wasn’t afraid of getting older.
“The way I live, the way I work, the way I feel, I’m going to make every moment count,” Parton said. “I may live to be 100, or I may die tomorrow, but whenever that is, I will know I died trying, and I will know I’ve done everything I could to make the most of everything.”
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