Dolly Parton, country music legend and philanthropist, dies at 80

Dolly Parton, one of the greatest singer-songwriters in country music and a philanthropist whose literacy programmes reached millions of children, has died aged 80. Her team said she died on Tuesday at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville, surrounded by loved ones, "after bravely facing a brief battle with cancer".

A family announcement

The news was announced by her nephew, Brian Seaver, on Instagram. "I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven't truly felt it until now," he wrote, adding that it was "an honour that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness".

Parton was born in poverty in a one-room cabin in Tennessee, the fourth child of a mother who would go on to have 12 children by the age of 35 and a father who worked as a farmer and construction worker. After graduating from high school in 1964 she moved to Nashville, where she started out as a songwriter rather than a performer.

Two classic songs, written in a single day

So gifted that she wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You on the same day, Parton produced a catalogue that yielded a record 25 US country No 1 singles and 47 albums in the country Top 10. Jolene was released in 1973 and became her first British success, reaching No 7; I Will Always Love You, written as a farewell to her duet partner Porter Wagoner, topped the country chart in 1974 and again in 1982, before Whitney Houston's version for The Bodyguard turned it into a global pop hit.

The 1980 film 9 to 5, in which she starred with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, gave her a country No 1 and an Oscar nomination for best original song. Islands in the Stream, her 1983 duet with Kenny Rogers, topped the US pop chart, and the 1987 trio album with Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt earned her only Grammy nomination for album of the year. Her most recent album, Rockstar, appeared in 2023.

Business, Dollywood and a vaccine

Parton was also an astute businesswoman. Sandollar, the production company she founded with her former manager Sandy Gallin, went on to make Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Father of the Bride films. In 1986 she took a stake in a Tennessee theme park, Silver Dollar City, and renamed it Dollywood. The Dollywood Foundation, created in 1988, funded college scholarships and later her Imagination Library, which since 1995 has mailed a free book every month to children up to the age of five. The charity has donated more than 300 million books and distributes about 40 million a year; Jeff Bezos gave $100m to the foundation in 2022.

Her giving went well beyond books: in 2020 she donated $1m to Vanderbilt University's medical centre for Covid-19 research that formed part of the basis for the Moderna vaccine, and she funded conservation work and relief after the 2016 Smoky Mountain wildfires.

Final months

In May 2026 Parton cancelled a Las Vegas residency because of health issues. A Broadway musical built around her songs is due to open later this year, after a run in Nashville. She married Carl Dean in 1966; he died in 2025.