Anna Nicole Smith’s Death, Son, Daughter & Inheritance Facts
Anna Nicole Smith’s story rarely lines up: in five months she lost her 20-year-old son Daniel, gave birth to daughter Dannielynn, and then died at 39 in February 2007. The verified timeline is short, and almost every major turn sits between September 2006 and February 2007 — with legal aftershocks that kept going for years.
Born: November 28, 1967 · Died: February 8, 2007 · Age at death: 39 · Son Daniel: Died at 20, three days after Dannielynn was born · Daughter Dannielynn: About 5 months old when Anna Nicole Smith died
Quick snapshot
- Anna Nicole Smith died on February 8, 2007, at age 39 (Encyclopaedia Britannica (reference publisher)).
- Her death was ruled an accidental overdose involving nine prescription drugs (ABC News (U.S. broadcaster)).
- Larry Birkhead was determined to be Dannielynn’s biological father (Pioneer Press (Minnesota daily)).
- What Dannielynn received from the Marshall estate is not confirmed in the public court records available to this review.
- Dannielynn’s current net worth is not publicly documented.
- Larry Birkhead’s marital status is not confirmed by the reporting reviewed here.
- Daniel died September 10, 2006 — three days after Dannielynn was born (People (celebrity news outlet)).
- The DNA probability reported at the time was 99.99 percent (CNN (U.S. news network, via KLTV)).
- Dannielynn was raised by Larry Birkhead outside the tabloid cycle.
- The Marshall estate fight remained open long after Anna Nicole Smith’s death.
- Any inheritance figure for Dannielynn would need verified court records, not media estimates.
Seven biographical facts anchor the whole story — one pattern: almost every major turn happens in a five-month window in 2006 and 2007.
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full name | Vickie Lynn Hogan, professionally known as Anna Nicole Smith |
| Born | November 28, 1967, Houston, Texas |
| Died | February 8, 2007, Hollywood, Florida |
| Age at death | 39 |
| Son | Daniel Wayne Smith, born in 1986 and died September 10, 2006 |
| Daughter | Dannielynn Birkhead, born September 7, 2006 |
| Husband | J. Howard Marshall II, married in 1994 and died in 1995 |
What did Anna Nicole pass away from?
The short answer is accidental overdose. The official record is more precise: the Broward County Medical Examiner ruled her death an accidental combined-drug intoxication involving nine prescription drugs.
What did the medical examiner rule?
- Accidental combined-drug intoxication, with nine prescription drugs involved.
- An accident, not an intentional act — the category that shaped every later legal question.
The “accidental” label matters. It removed criminal suspicion, but it did not remove the family’s legal chaos. The ruling arrived in February 2007, and the estate questions ran on separately.
What did the toxicology report show?
- The substances were prescription medications; the forensic summaries reviewed here did not report illegal drugs.
- The fatal mix, not any single drug, was what the medical examiner cited as the cause.
The public record describes a combination of prescription medications — a reminder that “overdose” in this case does not mean street drugs. It means legal medications, taken together, turning lethal.
The implication: the official cause was accident, which is why the public record treats her death as a medical event rather than a legal one. The financial fight, however, was always legal.
Did Anna Nicole have a son that died?
Yes. Daniel Wayne Smith was Anna Nicole Smith’s son with Billy Smith, and she was 18 when he was born in 1986 (People (celebrity news outlet)). Daniel died on September 10, 2006, at age 20, and his death was ruled an accidental drug overdose involving prescription drugs (ABC News (U.S. broadcaster)).
A Wikipedia summary of cited public records describes the fatal combination as methadone and antidepressants.
How old was Anna Nicole Smith when she gave birth to her son?
- She was 18 when Daniel was born in 1986.
- Daniel arrived years before her fame and the Marshall marriage — the two chapters the tabloids focused on.
Becoming a mother as a teenager is the part of Anna Nicole Smith’s biography that later coverage often skipped. Her son was part of her life long before the cameras arrived.
How did Anna Nicole Smith react to her son’s death?
Public records document what happened to Daniel; they do not document Anna Nicole Smith’s private grief. Treat any detailed description of her emotional state as reporting, not verified fact.
What is documented is sequence: Daniel died days after Dannielynn’s birth, and Anna Nicole Smith’s own death followed five months later. The reporting from the time described her as devastated; the private reality is not something a record can confirm.
How old was Daniel Smith when he died?
Daniel Wayne Smith: born 1986 · Age at death: 20 · Died: September 10, 2006 · Ruling: accidental drug overdose, prescription drugs involved
The numbers are worth sitting with: 20 years old, three days after his sister’s birth, five months before his mother’s death. In most tellings these two tragedies get blurred into one — they were separate events, with separate records.
Daniel’s death and Dannielynn’s birth share one week in September 2006, and separating the two is the only way to follow the custody and inheritance fights that came after.
How old was the baby when Anna Nicole died?
Dannielynn was about five months old. She was born on September 7, 2006, in the Bahamas, and Anna Nicole Smith died on February 8, 2007. The gap was about five months.
When was Dannielynn Birkhead born?
- September 7, 2006, in the Bahamas.
- Three days later, her half-brother Daniel died.
Dannielynn’s birth in the Bahamas is the reason the paternity question was resolved by a Bahamian court rather than a U.S. one.
Who is Dannielynn Birkhead’s father?
- Larry Birkhead, established by DNA testing; the sample was tested March 21, 2007, and the result was announced April 10, 2007.
- The reported DNA probability was 99.99 percent.
- A Bahamian court ruled on paternity after a dispute between Birkhead and Howard K. Stern.
- Smith had initially identified Howard K. Stern as the father; the DNA record overrode that.
The DNA result ended the public guessing in April 2007, less than three months after Anna Nicole Smith’s death. What it did not do was settle the Marshall estate question, which ran on a separate legal track.
The pattern: a baby born in one country, a paternity dispute settled through another country’s court, and a mother who died before any of it was resolved. The tabloid version made it one messy story; the record makes it three separate ones.
Did Anna Nicole Smith ever get any of her husband’s money?
Not through his will. Anna Nicole Smith married J. Howard Marshall II in 1994, and he died in 1995, according to Wikipedia’s summary of cited public records (Wikipedia (community encyclopedia)). She did not inherit under his will, and the fight over his fortune carried on for years after his death.
How much money did Anna Nicole’s daughter inherit when she died?
No verified public figure exists for what Dannielynn inherited from the Marshall estate. A number in a headline is a claim, not a record.
The confirmed part is negative: Anna Nicole Smith did not inherit under Marshall’s will. The unconfirmed part is what, if anything, later passed to Dannielynn through the years of litigation. Only court records could settle that, and they are not part of the public tabloid record.
How much is Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter worth now?
- Documented: Anna Nicole Smith did not inherit under Marshall’s will.
- Not documented: Dannielynn’s current net worth.
- Not documented: any final distribution amount from the Marshall estate.
If you see a net-worth number for Dannielynn Birkhead online, treat it as an estimate. The verified record ends at “did not inherit under the will,” and everything after that is private litigation history.
The trade-off: the Marshall case turned a private fortune into a public legal saga, but it also kept the financial details out of the press. For Dannielynn, that means the record is clean — and quiet.
The pattern: the Marshall fight was public, but its final accounting stayed private; the verdict for Dannielynn is that her financial picture remains outside the celebrity record.
Who looks after Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter?
Larry Birkhead does. After the paternity ruling, Birkhead was awarded legal custody of Dannielynn and raised her mostly outside the public eye.
Did Larry Birkhead ever get married?
Larry Birkhead’s marital status is not confirmed in the reporting reviewed for this article. Social-media claims about a wedding are not part of the verified record.
The verified record covers his paternity case and his role as Dannielynn’s parent. It does not include a confirmed marriage or partner.
What is Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter doing now?
- Raised by Larry Birkhead in a deliberately low-profile setup.
- Seen in public rarely, usually at events she chooses.
- No confirmed public record details her studies, work, or daily life.
The girl at the center of the 2007 custody fight grew up with almost no tabloid presence. That privacy is the quiet resolution of a very loud story.
What does Larry Birkhead do for money?
- Documented: Birkhead works as a photographer.
- Not documented: his current income or whether the Marshall case affected his financial position.
The public record says little beyond the photographer detail, and that is consistent with the way he has handled his daughter’s privacy.
Why this matters: Dannielynn’s childhood is the one part of this story that resolved quietly. The custody question that looked like tabloid fuel in 2007 produced a life with almost no public record — which is exactly what her mother’s coverage never allowed.
The verified timeline
The sequence reads like a tabloid plot, but every entry below comes from sources cited in this article: birth records, death rulings, and a court decision.
The pattern: a birth and two deaths compressed into five months, with a fortune fight running alongside and a custody case settling the aftermath.
What’s confirmed and what’s still unclear
The split is simple: the high-level facts are established, and the financial details are not. That gap explains why different searches about Anna Nicole Smith produce such different answers.
Confirmed facts
- Anna Nicole Smith was born in 1967 and died in 2007 at age 39.
- She had a son, Daniel, who died in 2006 at age 20.
- She had a daughter, Dannielynn, born September 7, 2006.
- Dannielynn was about five months old when Anna died.
- Larry Birkhead was established as Dannielynn’s father.
- Anna’s death was ruled an accidental overdose.
- She did not inherit J. Howard Marshall II’s fortune; court disputes followed.
What’s unclear
- Dannielynn’s current net worth is not publicly documented.
- Whether Larry Birkhead is or has been married is not confirmed.
- The final amount, if any, Dannielynn received from the Marshall estate requires verified court records.
- Anna Nicole Smith’s private emotional state after Daniel’s death is not fully knowable from public records.
- The exact drug mix in Anna’s fatal overdose varies across reports; some drug names were presented differently in coverage.
- The specific drugs in Daniel’s fatal combination come from secondary summaries, not primary forensic records in the reviewed materials.
- The full financial terms of the Marshall litigation were never part of the public tabloid record.
What this means: the major biographical facts are settled, while the money questions never produced a public number — and the absence of a number is itself the verified answer.
In their own words
Two voices capture the range of the coverage: an obituary’s dry wit and a medical examiner’s clinical finding.
“Rich (sporadically) and litigious (chronically).”
Anna Nicole Smith’s obituary, The New York Times
The medical examiner declared Anna Nicole Smith’s death an accidental overdose, with nine prescription drugs in her system.
Broward County Medical Examiner, as reported by ABC News
The gap between those two voices — the obituary’s irony and the medical examiner’s plain language — shows how the same life could be covered as spectacle and as record at the same time.
Why the record still matters
Dannielynn Birkhead is the reason this history stays relevant. She was five months old when her mother died, about seven months old when DNA testing named her father, and raised largely outside the public eye since. For anyone still asking about the Marshall fortune, the verified record ends at a court fight that outlasted Anna Nicole Smith, not at a public settlement. For Dannielynn, the choice was made early — privacy over spotlight — and the consequence is that the rest of her financial story remains in private records, not headlines.
Related reading: Anna Nicole Smith Cause of Death and Estate Battle · Anna Nicole Smith: Death, Son Daniel & Money Fight
Frequently asked questions
Who was J. Howard Marshall II?
J. Howard Marshall II was the man Anna Nicole Smith married in 1994; he died in 1995, and the fight over his estate outlasted her life.
Where was Anna Nicole Smith born?
Houston, Texas, on November 28, 1967. She was born Vickie Lynn Hogan.
Where did Anna Nicole Smith die?
In Hollywood, Florida, on February 8, 2007, at age 39.
How old was Anna Nicole Smith when she married J. Howard Marshall II?
Born in November 1967 and married in 1994, she was in her mid-20s at the time of the wedding.
What was Anna Nicole Smith’s son’s name?
Daniel Wayne Smith. He was born in 1986 and died in September 2006 at age 20.
How old was Dannielynn when Anna Nicole Smith died?
About five months old. Dannielynn was born September 7, 2006, and her mother died February 8, 2007.
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