Police spokesman Mark Rosen told reporters Houston was pronounced dead at 15:55 pm (23:55 GMT) in her room on the fourth floor of the Beverly Hilton Hotel where she had been staying as a guest. It is unclear at the time of writing this report what she died from, but it was reported that she was unresponsive at the scene despite attempts to resuscitate her.
Whitney Houston will be remembered as one of the most influential black female artists of her generation. Her achievements included 170m records sold worldwide, 6 Grammy awards, 30 Billboard awards and 22 American Music Awards. She had a fine pedigree in the music world. Her mother was gospel artiste Cissy Houston, Dionne Warwick was a cousin and Aretha Franklin was her Godmother. At the height of her career in the 80's and 90's she had many number one singles throughout the world and won many international awards.
Whitney Houston's most memorable song, written by Dolly Parton, was "I Will Always Love You" which is the biggest selling song by a female recording artist of all time. Dolly Parton gave this quote today about the death of Whitney Houston " Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston." "I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, 'Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed".
In latter years it is said that here voice had suffered from drug abuse. She could no longer hit the high notes for which she was famous and her voice became hoarse and raspy. Houston had married singer Bobby Brown and the marriage was tempestuous and ended in divorce in 2007. During the last decade, Houston's behaviour became more and more erratic. She was so thin when she appeared at a Michael Jackson concert in 2001 that rumours started to spread about her death the following day. In 2002, during an interview on ABC with Diane Sawyer she said: "The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy."
During this time, she missed concert dates and was stopped at an airport due to drugs.She checked into rehab twice before declaring herself drug-free in 2010. Whitney had attempted a comeback in 2009 when she released the album "I Look To You" but the concerts to promote the album were lackluster and off-key and were not well received by the critics.
Music journalist, Paul Gambaccini told the BBC that Whitney Houston had a voice which was "the template for female vocal performers for the last 30 years". He went on to say "she became the victim of a self-administered decline and, sadly, threw all it all away. It's always a tragedy; it's a life lost, a great talent squandered,"
These are sentiments that will be felt by all fans of Whitney Houston as they mourn her death today.
