At the top of her game, Whitney Houston 's talent was unmatched.
The How Will I Know singer - who would have turned 59 today - amassed a staggering £76million, but by the time she died in 2012, her fortune was gone after a years-long battle with addiction.
In 2009, Whitney came clean about her demons, admitting her drug use escalated after her marriage to Bobby Brown and hit 1992 movie, The Bodyguard.
"After The Bodyguard it started getting heavy - cocaine, marijuana," she told chat show host Oprah Winfrey.
Despite having insisted in 2002 that "I make too much money to smoke crack. Crack is whack," she admitted to spending seven months in her pyjamas, sitting on the sofa getting high on crack cocaine.
"You're living in the same house, and you're sitting next to that person and you're not saying a word for a week. And you just sit there watching TV. That bad," she said.
"I didn't think about singing any more - I'd totally forgotten about that life. I had so much money by that time."
An attempt to get clean in March 2004 failed when Whitney walked out of rehab after just five days. She tried again the following year.
Whitney told Oprah in 2010 that she was finally drug-free. However, she pulled out of a string of planned gigs in the UK and America that same year, citing ill health, and returned to rehab in 2011.
She was due to stage a comeback at the Grammys in February 2012.
But after arriving in Los Angeles several days before the award ceremony, she reportedly appeared "dishevelled" and "erratic" and was spotted wandering aimlessly through the Beverly Hilton hotel with wet hair, waving her arms around.
Her last ever public appearance came on February 9 when she took to the stage with Kelly Price to sing Jesus Loves Me.
On the morning of July 11, she had breakfast at the hotel with daughter Bobbi, then sources say she retired to suite Suite 434; ordered more food and took some Xanax ahead of Clive Davis' party where she was due to perform that evening.
"She frequently took anti-anxiety medications to help her sleep after nights of heavy partying," a source told Radar Online.
"She also took them before big performances to calm her nerves."
Whitney apparently then took a phone call from her cousin, singer Dionne Warwick, about seating arrangements for that evening, followed by another from her mum, gospel singer Cissy Houston, which the publication described as 'cheerful and upbeat'.
She is said to have told her assistant that she had a sore throat and was going to take a bath before the pre-Grammys bash.
Next, the troubled star reportedly ordered more room service, eating a burger with fries as she ran the bath. She took a turkey sandwich and some jalepeno peppers into the bathroom with her, along with a gravy boat of olive oil - presumably to add to the bath to soften her skin.
According to the report, her bodyguards heard her singing in the tub. But shortly before 3pm they realised she had been quiet for some time. One guard called out, but there was no answer, and when he knocked, there was no response so he opened the door and found Whitney face down in the bathtub.
Paramedics attempted CPR but pronounced the iconic singer dead at the scene.
Toxicology reports found Whitney had a mix of cocaine, cannabis, Xanax, Benadryl and Flexeril in her system.
The Bodyguard star's autopsy report found that she had heart disease so advanced that one artery was 60 per cent blocked.
Her official cause of death was given as accidental drowning contributed to by heart disease and cocaine use.
