She was once the golden girl of the music industry. A shining star with an incredibly pure voice, she changed the way female singers interpreted music.
Whitney Houston was also the world's most honoured female singer, winning more than 400 awards.
In her prime Houston dominated the Grammys like no other before or since.
More stories from Today TonightToday, after 30 years in the industry, she was the star again.
Whitney's tragic demise, her fame, rocky marriage to Bobby Brown, and ongoing battle with drugs are all well documented.
In her revealing interview with Oprah in 2009, she said “he liked to drink, I wasn't a drinker. Alcoholism - that's an ugly thing. Either you're going to be a really nice alcoholic, or you're a really mean one. Well he was mean.”
Gallery: Whitney Houston
Of her shambolic performance on her last tour of Australia, concert promoter Andrew McManus said "I can attest to her strengths and her resilience, because I said to her during the tour ‘I'm really sorry about what the media are doing to you’ and she just said ‘look Andrew, if this is what god's got for me, this is my whack, and I'm just going to accept it. But if people don’t want to accept me for what I am, I'm happy in my own skin, because I'm leaving it all on the stage every night’, and she did."
Perth will always remember Whitney for her empowering performance at the 1988 telethon, when she was still at the top of her game.
Whitney's star power hit its peak in the 1992 movie The Bodyguard. The movie's album still remains the bestselling soundtrack of all time.
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Ironically it was this superstardom that Whitney openly admitted she struggled with.
“I like to wear jeans and t-shirts and sneakers on any normal given day. I love to get dressed up, and I love to do makeup and hair and stuff, but that was my performance, that was my entertainment,” she once said in an interview.
“It was just too much, it was just too much to try and live up to - to try and be, and I wanted out at some point."
Yahoo!7 News: Whitney Houston's daughter in hospital
US investigative journalist Jim Moret says "in a way she was like a runaway train going in the wrong direction and i think many people were fearful that this was the ultimate end for her although the timing was surreal" said Jim Moret.
Whitney, at just 48, has joined a long list of superstars that have met an early and sudden death. Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse, Michael Hutchence, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Elvis Presley.
US investigative journalist Jim Moret says "the bigger the star, the more enablers are around these celebrities. We've seen it time and time again, and this is yet the latest example of that.
More stories from reporter Adene Cassidy
“We saw it with Michael Jackson. You have so many people around you that put you in a cocoon, that people who need to get you help aren't able to get to you."
Despite being admitted to rehab in May last year, Whitney was on a mission to prove to herself and the world she had finally exorcised her demons. Ready to perform at a Grammys party, she never made it.
"The voice of Whitney Houston is not going to be repeated. I suppose from my experiences the only other act that comes close to it would be Mariah Carey with her six octave range. What Whitney could do with that voice, and that golden treacle, and the notes, no one's going to come near it," McManus said.
Yahoo!7 News: A prayer for Houston opens the Grammys
It could be six weeks before the results of the toxicology report reveal what finally killed Whitney, but her legacy and her music, will never die.
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