Dolly Parton, the beloved nation music famous person generally known as a lot for her philanthropy and theme park enterprise as she was for her chart-topping hit songs, has died at 80.
Parton’s dying on Tuesday was introduced by her publicist. No reason for dying was supplied.
“As a lot of , I’ve been coping with some well being challenges, and my docs inform me that I should have just a few procedures,” Parton wrote on Instagram in September 2025, although she by no means specified the character of her well being points. Almost six months later, on the seasonal opening of her Dollywood theme park, she said that she was nonetheless coping with “just a few little well being points” from which she was taking time to recuperate.
Parton additionally shared that she was nonetheless navigating her grief over the March 2025 dying of her husband of almost 60 years, Carl Dean, saying that she had been taking time since to rebuild herself “spiritually, emotionally and bodily.”
Dolly Parton Performs at Agua Caliente On line casino, Jan. 24, 2014, in Rancho Mirage, Calif.
Valerie Macon/Getty Pictures
In a music profession that started when she was nonetheless a baby, born into poverty within the tiny mountain neighborhood of Pittman Middle, Tennessee, Parton went on to grow to be one of many world’s most profitable and admired entertainers, considered a rustic music residing legend. Her trademark type – large blonde hair, flamboyant garments and make-up – was cultivated early in her profession, whereas she was nonetheless in her teenagers.
“I take my negatives and attempt to make them into positives, and I all the time really feel higher being extra flamboyant,” Parton wrote in her 2023 guide “Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones.” “Possibly I regarded low cost, however I knew I wasn’t low cost.”
Parton’s type helped her get seen however her musical items made her unforgettable. She wrote and recorded a lot of nation and pop’s most enduring songs, together with the hits “Jolene,” “Coat of Many Colours” – added to the Library of Congress Nationwide Recording Registry in 2011 – “Right here You Come Once more,” “Love Is Like a Butterfly,” “9 to five” and extra.
Parton’s largest hit, nevertheless, was inarguably “I Will All the time Love You,” which topped the charts thrice, most notably when Whitney Houston’s 1992 cowl grew to become a world smash. Houston’s efficiency stays the best-selling track by a feminine artist of all time.
In 2014, the Report Trade Affiliation of America acknowledged Parton for gross sales of over 100 million items worldwide, together with 19 RIAA-certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum albums out of the greater than 100 studio, dwell and compilation albums she launched throughout her six-decade-plus recording profession.
Parton was additionally an actress, making her big-screen debut within the 1980 hit comedy “9 to five,” reverse Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, and wrote and carried out the movie’s chart-topping, Grammy-winning theme track. Not together with cameos as herself, she appeared in some 9 movies in all, amongst them the enduring 1989 comedy-drama “Metal Magnolias.”
A savvy businesswoman, Forbes journal in June 2025 estimated Parton’s net financial worth at $450 million, inserting her No. 78 on their checklist of America’s wealthiest self-made ladies. Along with her intensive publishing catalog – Parton was cautious to retain possession of the songs she wrote, the recordings of which quantity over 1,000 – the majority of her wealth got here from her Dollywood theme park and different leisure and hospitality holdings below her Dollywood Firm.
Dolly Parton was additionally beneficiant along with her cash. By means of her nonprofit Dollywood Basis, “Saint Dolly,” as her followers dubbed her, supported schooling by offering scholarships and monetary help to folks in want. Her Creativeness Library, begun in 1995, has supplied almost 308 million books at no cost to kids within the U.S., the U.Ok., Eire, Canada and Australia, in line with its official website.
Dolly Parton on the 2022 Rock & Roll Corridor of Fame Induction Ceremony held on the Microsoft Theatre, Nov. 5, 2022 in Los Angeles.
Christopher Polk/Getty Pictures
When wildfires in 2016 ravaged the Nice Smoky Mountains in Jap Tennessee, the place she grew up, Parton created a fund that gave $1,000 a month for six months to some 900 households affected by the fires to assist them get again on their toes, and likewise organized a telethon to boost cash for the fires’ victims. 4 years later, Parton donated $1 million to Tennessee’s Vanderbilt College Medical Middle to assist fund the seek for a COVID-19 vaccine, and later urged Individuals to get vaccinated in opposition to the virus in a video that confirmed her receiving the shot as she sang her hit “Jolene,” with the chorus up to date to “vaccine.”
Parton was one in all solely 17 folks to be inducted into each the Nation Music Corridor of Fame and the Rock and Roll Corridor of Fame, a rarified checklist that additionally contains fellow greats Elvis Presley, Johnny Money, Willie Nelson and Ray Charles; with Brenda Lee, Parton was one in all solely two feminine artists so honored. She was one in all fewer nonetheless artists inducted into the Nation, Rock and Roll and Songwriters Halls of Fame.
In 2004, the Library of Congress honored Parton with its Residing Legend Award in recognition to her contributions to American tradition. The next 12 months, she acquired the Nationwide Medal of Arts, the U.S. authorities’s highest honor for an artist, in addition to the Kennedy Middle Honors in 2006.
Parton acquired a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2011, along with her 10 Grammy wins out of greater than 50 nominations. Moreover, her songs “Jolene” and “I Will All the time Love You” have been inducted into the Grammy Corridor of Fame. In 2024, Billboard magazine placed Parton in the No. 1 spot on their checklist of the “100 Biggest Nation Artists of All Time.”
Parton married Carl Dean in 1966, who handed away in 2025. That they had no kids.
