Nicole L. Cvetnic is The Root’s multimedia editor and producer.
Bobbi Kristina Brown has passed away, months after the 22-year-old was found unresponsive in a bathtub in her Roswell, Ga., home on Jan. 31. While her family has stood vigil at her hospital bedside, the daughter of Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston never regained consciousness. Here is a look back at Bobbi Kristina’s life.
“She encourages me and inspires me,” Whitney Houston once said of her daughter. “When I look at her eyes and I see myself, I go, ‘OK. I can do this. I can do this.’”
Whitney Houston met R&B star Bobby Brown at the Soul Train Music Awards in 1989 and they were married in 1992. Bobbi Kristina was born a year later on March 4, 1993, in Livingston, N.J.
“She wasn’t only a mother; she was a best friend,” Bobbi Kristina told Oprah during a 2012 interview.
While struggling with addiction, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown reportedly moved the family to Atlanta to be near a singer-turned-evangelical preacher.
Bobbi Kristina’s parents divorced in 2007, and she and her father were estranged.
Bobbi Kristina made appearances in the 2005 Bravo reality show Being Bobby Brown, which highlighted the family’s dysfunction.
Whitney Houston told Oprah in 2009 that she and Bobbi Kristina were so close that she took her child to a 30-day drug-rehab center because “I just had to have her with me. I wanted her to understand.”
Though Whitney Houston never formally adopted him, Nick Gordon joined the family when he was 12 years old and Bobbi Kristina was 9. He was raised as her brother.
Her mother’s death hit her hard. Bobbi Kristina was hospitalized twice in the days following her mother’s death for what relative Billy Watson called a “nervous breakdown.”
Bobbi Kristina’s union with Nick Gordon did not sit well with her family. Patricia Houston, Bobbi Kristina’s aunt, obtained a restraining order against Gordon, effective through April 2015.
There has long been a rift between the Houstons and the Browns. When asked about Bobby Brown in a 2013 interview with Oprah, Cissy Houston, Bobbi Kristina’s grandmother, said, “I don’t dislike him. I don’t particularly like the way he treated my daughter.”
Bobbi Kristina was the sole heir to her mother’s fortune.
Bobbi Kristina was pursuing an acting career and was featured on the short-lived 2012 reality show The Houstons: On Our Own.
Bobbi Kristina lived with Nick Gordon in Atlanta. In 2013 the couple was evicted from an apartment after multiple noise complaints from a neighbor.
The young couple announced their marriage in January 2014, although sources say it has never been officially recognized.
In March 2014, Bobbi Kristina came under scrutiny for her suddenly skinny physique. She tweeted, “I am my mother’s child! Have you ever heard of a #fastmetabolism?”
After Bobbi Kristina was found comatose in a bathtub in January, a criminal investigation was launched because bruises were found on her face and mouth. But police have not yet confirmed whether Nick Gordon is directly under investigation for any crime.
In one of the last statements given by Bobbi Kristina’s grandmother Cissy Houston before Bobbi Kristina’s death, she said, “She’s the same; she’s not progressing at all. She’s not gone yet, but, you know, whatever the Lord decides, I’m ready for her. … I have nothing to do with that. That’s his job. It’s his territory, you know? And I understand it.”
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