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25 Famous Women Who Recently Died

*Originally Published by  in July 2023 and Updated by Diana K in May 2024

We have witnessed countless influential women who have shaped the spheres of culture, entertainment, business and even politics only to be robbed by death. While some died at an old age after accomplishing their set purposes, some died prematurely. Their lives are not in vain as they left a legacy that challenges the societal status quo and inspires many generations to come after them.

In this article, we highlight 20 famous women who recently died. From Queen Elizabeth who was a monarch that ruled over 32 sovereign states during her lifetime to Tina Turner whose hit songs continue to outlive her and inspire many generations. Let’s delve into our list that dates back to famous women who died in 2020 to date.

1. Naomi Judd

Naomi Judd was an American country music singer. In 1980, she and her daughter Wynonna formed the duo known as The Judds, which became a very successful country music act, winning five Grammy Awards and nine Country Music Association awards. The Judds ceased performing in 1991 after Naomi was diagnosed with hepatitis. 

Naomi struggled with mental health issues throughout her life. She died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 30, 2022, the day before she and Wynonna were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. 

2. Queen Elizabeth

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Queen Elizabeth was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime and remained the monarch of 15 realms by the time of her death.

Queen Elizabeth’s reign of over 70 years is the longest of any British monarch and the longest verified reign of any female head of state in history. She died peacefully surrounded by her family on 8 September 2022 in Buckingham Palace at the age of 96. Read more about 25 Things You Need to Know about Queen Elizabeth II Coronation. 

3. Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters was an American broadcast journalist and television personality. Known for her interviewing ability and popularity with viewers, she appeared as a host of numerous television programs, including Today, ABC Evening News, 20/20, and The View.

During her career, Walters interviewed every sitting U.S. president and first lady from Richard and Pat Nixon to Barack and Michelle Obama. She also interviewed both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, though not when each was president. Walters had been suffering from dementia in her later years, and died at her home in Manhattan, on December 30, 2022, at age 93. 

4. Tina Turner

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Tina Turner was a singer, songwriter and actress. Known as the Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll, she rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Ike & Tina Turner Revue before launching a successful career as a solo performer. Turner has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling recording artists of all time.  

Tina was the first black artist and the first woman to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone ranked her among the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. On May 24, 2023, Turner died at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, at the age of 83 from natural causes after years of illnesses. Read the top 15 Remarkable Facts about Tina Turner. 

5. Coco Lee

Coco Lee was a Hong Kong musician, actress, dancer, and singer. Her career began in Hong Kong and later expanded to Taiwan and internationally. Lee released 18 studio albums, two live albums, and five compilation albums, including her first English-language album, Just No Other Way and her album, Coco Lee, which became the best-selling album of 1996 in Asia.

On 2 July 2023, Lee attempted suicide and was admitted to the hospital in an unconscious state. She died at the hospital three days later, on 5 July 2023, at the age of 48.

6. Betty White

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Betty White was an American actress and comedian. Betty produced and starred in the series Life with Elizabeth, making her the first woman to produce a sitcom. For her lengthy work in radio, television, and film, White twice earned the Guinness World Record for the longest TV career by a female entertainer in both 2014 and 2018.

White received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1995. On December 25, 2021, White suffered a stroke. On the morning of December 31, she died in her sleep at her home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles at the age of 99.

7. Kirstie Alley

Kirstie Alley was an American actress. Alley has received several Emmy awards and a Golden Globe award. Alley appeared in reality television including Kirstie Alley’s Big Life and served as a contestant on the 12th season of Dancing with the Stars, where she finished in second place, behind Hines Ward, and the 22nd series of the British reality show Celebrity Big Brother, in which she finished as runner-up. In early 2022, she appeared on The Masked Singer. 

Alley was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer in May 2022 following a doctor’s visit for a sore back. Despite chemotherapy treatments, she died at her home in Clearwater on December 5, 2022, at the age of 71.

8. Marilyn Bergman

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Marilyn Bergman worked closely with her husband Alan Bergman in an American songwriting duo. They got married in 1958 until Marilyn’s death in 2022, together they wrote music and lyrics for numerous celebrated television, film, and stage productions. 

The Bergmans enjoyed a successful career, honored with four Emmys, three Oscars, and two Grammys. They are in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

 9. Kim Mi-soo

Kim Mi-soo was a South Korean actress and model.  During the early stages of her career, Kim was known for her debut role in Lipstick Revolution. Kim’s appearance in Snowdrop was her most notable on-screen performance to date. On January 5, 2022, Kim died due to unspecified causes at age 29. 

10. Elza Soares

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Elza Soares was a Brazilian samba singer. In 1999, she was named Singer of the Millennium along with Tina Turner by BBC Radio. Soares scored a number of hits in Brazil throughout her career, she produced no major hit singles but it was considered representative of the samba-soul of the early 1970s.

11. Betty Davis

Betty Davis was an American singer, songwriter, and model. Davis remained a cult figure as a singer, due to her sexual lyrics and performance style, which were both controversial for the time. She had success in Europe, but in the U.S. she was barred from performing on television because of her sexually aggressive stage persona.

Davis wrote and arranged all her songs. Her first record, Betty Davis, was released in 1973. She released two more studio albums, They Say I’m Different and her major label debut on Island Records Nasty Gal. Davis died from cancer at her home in Pennsylvania, on February 9, 2022, at the age of 77. Read more about 55 Most Famous Jazz Singers.

12. Jane Birkin

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Jane Birkin was a British and French actress and singer.  She also had a prolific career as an actress, mostly in French cinema. Birkin began her career as an actress, appearing in minor roles in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup, and Kaleidoscope. 

In addition to her acting and musical credits, Birkin lent her name to the Hermès Birkin handbag. In 2002, she was diagnosed with leukemia and underwent rounds of treatment. On 16 July 2023, Birkin was found dead at home in Paris. She was 76.

13. Jacky Oh

Jacky Oh was an American actress. The Wild ‘N Out star was also the partner of DC Young Fly. Jacky rose to fame on the MTV and VH1 improv comedy show Wild ‘N Out.

Jacky died on 31 May 2023 and she was 32 years old. Her cause of death has still not been revealed.

14. Josephine Chaplin

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Josephine Chaplin was an American actress and the daughter of filmmaker Charlie Chaplin.  She had a featured role in The Canterbury Tales as May, the adulterous wife of the elderly Sir January. Chaplin died in Paris on July 13, 2023, at the age of 74.

15. Sue Johanson

Susan Johanson was a Canadian registered nurse and sex educator. She operated a birth control clinic in Toronto and hosted a series of radio and television programmes on birth control, safer sex and sexual health. 

Sue also published several books and wrote a newspaper column promoting sexual health. Johanson’s work educating and informing the public about birth control and sexual health earned her Canada’s second-highest civilian honor. Johanson died in Ontario, on June 28, 2023.

16. Cynthia Weil

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Cynthia Weil was an American songwriter who wrote many songs together with her husband Barry Mann. Weil and her husband were instrumental in shaping the sound of rock and roll in the 1960s.

In 1987, Weil was inducted with her husband into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and in 2011, they jointly received the Johnny Mercer Award, the highest honour bestowed by that Hall of Fame. Weil died at home in Beverly Hills, California, on June 1, 2023, at age 82.

17. Anna Shay

Anna Shay was an American socialite, businesswoman and television personality. The heiress of late billionaire Edward Shay rose to fame on the Netflix reality series Bling Empire.

Shay appeared on all three seasons of Bling Empire, which followed a group of wildly wealthy Asian and Asian Americans as they navigated life, love, and glamour in Los Angeles. Shay died on June 5 at the age of 62. 

18. Elizabeth Hubbard

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Elizabeth Hubbard was an American actress who received numerous Daytime Emmy Award nominations and eventually won two. Hubbard was recognized for her role as Althea Davis on the NBC daytime soap opera, The Doctors and received the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress. 

Elizabeth received another Emmy Award for playing former First Lady Edith Wilson in the television film First Ladies Diaries. Hubbard died of cancer at her home in Connecticut on April 8, 2023 at the age of 89.

19. Lisa Loring

Lisa Loring was an American actress. She was best known for her work as a child actress from age six playing Wednesday Addams on the 1964–1966 sitcom The Addams Family. She was one of the longer-surviving members of the show’s main cast. 

From 1980 to 1983, she played the character Cricket Montgomery on the CBS soap opera As the World Turns. Loring had a stroke possibly caused by smoking and hypertension, and died on January 28, 2023, at age 64. Read more on Jenna Ortega paying tribute to Lisa Loring who passed away aged 64. 

20. Kathryn Kates

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Kathryn Kates was an American actress. She was known for appearances on Seinfeld in the episodes The Rye and The Dinner Party. She also appeared in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Orange Is the New Black, The Many Saints of Newark and other roles in television and film. 

Kates appeared in over twenty off- and off-off-Broadway productions, and toured Europe with Saviana Stanescu’s Waxing West. Kates died of lung cancer in Florida on January 22, 2022, aged 73.  

21. Vivienne Westwood

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She was always one to shake things up.  the iconic British designer invented punk fashion, passed away in 2022 at the grand age of 81. She went out with a bang! Even in her final days, Vivienne was  anti-establishment with her signature bold political statements and avant-garde designs.I mean, who else could turn ripped tartan and safety pins into a cultural phenomenon?

She was a total rebel from the very beginning when she opened that famous shop on King’s Road with her then-partner Malcolm McLaren. She spent decades after that challenging mainstream fashion with her eco-consciousness and anti-establishment spirit.  An unforgettable trailblazer till the very end; that was  Vivienne Westwood.

22. Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright was one incredible woman. This trailblazer didn’t let being a refugee from Czechoslovakia stop her from reaching the highest levels of American government. As the first female Secretary of State, Albright navigated the delicate post-Cold War era with unwavering resolve and a keen intellect. Talk about shattering the glass ceiling!

Albright guided U.S. foreign policy with a steady hand after the Cold War ended in the 90s. She worked tirelessly in that role under President Clinton from 1997 to 2001. When Albright passed away in March 2022 at age 84, the world lost a true pioneer and public servant.

 23. Irene Papas

The Greek actress, who starred in over 70 films across 5 decades, passed away in September 2022 at the ripe old age of 93.  She utterly captivated audiences in iconic films spanning over half a century; from the epic war drama The Guns of Navarone (1961) to portraying the tragic heroines of Greek myth in films like Antigone and Electra. But did you know Papas had pipes too? She lent her beautiful vocals to that classic 1968 album Songs of Theodorakis.  We’ll never see another talent quite like Irene Papas.

24. Angela Lansbury

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The British-American actress had a remarkable longevity, starring on stage and screen for over eight decades. As a result she earned five Tony Awards, three Oscar nominations, a Grammy nod, and was up for 18 Primetime Emmys. Her big break came playing the maid in Gaslight (1944), but she  hit it big on Broadway as the lead in Mame (1966). 

A peoples favourite was her as Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996). Lansbury played that mystery writer/amateur detective with such charm and wit. Even into her 90s, she kept working, voicing Mrs. Potts in Beauty and the Beast and appearing in Mary Poppins Returns (2018). She passed on in October 11, 2022.

25. Eleanor Coppola

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This year we sadly lost Eleanor Coppola, the wife of legendary director Francis Ford Coppola was a talented documentary filmmaker.  Born in 1936 in Los Angeles, Eleanor came from an artistic family – her dad was a famous political cartoonist. After studying design at UCLA, she met Francis in 1963 while working on his horror flick Dementia 13.  

Eleanor’s most acclaimed work is the 1991 documentary Hearts of Darkness, a candid behind the scene look at the making of Apocalypse Now directed by her husband. But her legacy goes far beyond that – she was a driving creative force behind so many of the Coppola family’s iconic films. A true visionary and partner in the Hollywood trenches. 

Some of the women featured in the above article, lived a long prosperous life and died at a ripe old age, while others died prematurely at a young age. While death cut short the journeys of these women, their lives were significant and they left indelible marks in their professions and to the world in general. They have made it to the annals of history and some continue to receive recognition even in their deaths. More importantly, they have inspired countless generations to walk in their footsteps and achieve great milestones for their lives. Read more on 15 Famous People And Personalities Who Died On Their Birthday.