Whitney Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) spent much of her life in the public eye throughout her career. Born in Newark, New Jersey and raised in neighboring East Orange, Houston was under the musical tutelage of her mother Cissy Houston at Newark's New Hope Baptist Church where, in her preteens, she began performing solos to prepare herself for show business.
Though raised Baptist, Houston spent much of her schooling at Mount Saint Dominic Academy, an all-girls Catholic school in nearby Caldwell, where she subsequently graduated from in 1981. During this period, Houston engaged in her first sexual relationship with a woman, Robyn Crawford, with whom she met as a fellow counselor of a children's summer camp at East Orange in 1980. The romance ended in February 1982 after Houston told Crawford they couldn't continue the relationship due to the negative attention it might receive as Houston was seeking a recording deal; the two maintained a close platonic relationship, and later a professional partnership for the next two decades.
In 1983, shortly after signing with Arista Records, Houston embarked on a relationship with singer Jermaine Jackson as the two collaborated on several duets together. Because Jackson was married, the relationship was said to have inspired the production and later music video of Houston's first number one hit single, "Saving All My Love for You".
Throughout the 1980s, Houston maintained a very private life, which caught the attention of the tabloid press where they brought up the "unusual closeness" between Houston and Crawford, now a personal assistant, and began speculating that the pair was sexually intimate, which both women steadfastly denied to the press when asked.
Houston's sexuality would become a heavily debated issue during the singer's lifetime and posthumously as well with some of her friends claiming the late singer was at least bisexual.
During the late 1980s, she was involved with New York restaurateur Brad Johnson, who participated in the music video to Houston's 1988 hit, "Where Do Broken Hearts Go". Following their breakup, Houston became romantically involved with American comedian and actor Eddie Murphy and football star Randall Cunningham. Her close friendship with fellow pop superstar Michael Jackson was also examined, with rumors of a possible fling.
Houston then met American singer Bobby Brown at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards. By the end of 1989, Houston and Brown began forging a close friendship that turned into a romance by 1991. The couple married in 1992 and a year later, in 1993, welcomed their first and only child together, daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown. Throughout their 14-year marriage, Houston and Brown were constantly documented in the press due to domestic disputes, infidelity and rumors of drug use by the pair. In 2005, they participated in the reality TV series, Being Bobby Brown, which was critically maligned but commercially successful. A year later, Houston filed for legal separation from Brown, followed by divorce, which was granted in 2007; Houston never remarried.
The singer had several friendships with notable people such as the Winans family, actor Kevin Costner and singers Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey and Brandy.
By the 2000s, Houston's battles with substance use started to dominate both tabloid and mainstream media. In 2000, Houston made international headlines when she was detained at a Hawaiian airport for possessing half an ounce of marijuana in her purse. A year later, she appeared rail thin while performing for Michael Jackson, which produced rumors of Houston battling eating disorders.
In 2002, Houston did an interview with Diane Sawyer on Primetime where she admitted to using various substances but denied other rumors such as claims of anorexia and bulimia and of being addicted to crack cocaine. A more combative phone-in interview with Wendy Williams went viral after Houston lambasted Williams for asking her too many private questions. Houston came more forward with her issues in a 2009 interview with Oprah Winfrey, where she admitted to substance abuse and of her ex-husband Brown's domestic abuse.
Early life, family and faith
Houston was born the youngest child of her parents Emily "Cissy" Drinkard (1933–2024) and John Russell Houston Jr. (1920–2003) at Newark Presbyterian Hospital on August 9, 1963. Through her parents, Houston had an elder brother Michael (b. 1961) while two other brothers, John III (1943-2021) and Gary (b. 1957), were from her parents' previous respective spouses, Elsie Hamilton and Fred Garland.
Gary would later grow up to be a professional basketball player playing briefly with the Denver Nuggets before settling into a career as a singer himself. Houston and her brother Michael were born out-of-wedlock. Following John Houston's divorce from his first wife in the spring of 1964, he and Cissy married prior to Houston's first birthday.
Houston's mother was the founding member of the family gospel group, the Drinkard Singers and the founder of the session vocal group the Sweet Inspirations. Under the latter group, Houston's mother sang background for the likes of Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Dusty Springfield, Van Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Paul Simon and Elvis Presley, among others. Houston's maternal cousins Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick enjoyed successful careers in pop and soul music while another cousin, Leontyne Price, was a successful opera singer. Darlene Love, another accomplished session vocalist, became Houston's godmother while Franklin became her honorary aunt, with Houston often nicknaming her "Aunt Ree".
Houston's father was a former Army serviceman who later became an administrator under Newark Democratic mayor Kenneth A. Gibson. During his early years dating Houston's mother, he was a taxi driver and began managing Dionne Warwick's singing group, the Gospelaires. After Warwick landed a solo deal with Scepter Records, Cissy replaced her. John would later serve as his wife's manager after Cissy left the Sweet Inspirations in 1969.
According to her mother, Houston was named after actress Whitney Blake. During Houston's early years, her and her family lived at what was then a predominantly black middle-class Newark neighborhood called Wainwright Street.
Houston earned her lifelong nickname, "Nippy", as an infant by her father, citing a comic book character named Nippy Nibbs, who would often get into mischievous activity. As a fussy baby during winter months, she constantly kicked off her blankets at night. Houston's father would then joked, "Nippy — seldom right". Most of her family and friends referred to Houston as "Nippy" (or "Nip") for the rest of her life. Later on in her life, she acquired a lesser known nickname, "Illegal", according to Marvin Winans.
When Houston was three, she accidentally injured herself after a clothes hanger was caught near her throat after Houston was playing with the hanger with her tongue and her brother "gestured wildly and the hanger went back in her mouth" while Houston ripped it off her throat, according to Lester Fabian Braithwaite of Entertainment Weekly. Houston's parents feared she'd lost her voice but doctors were able to patch the wound, telling Houston's parents the hanger came "within an inch" of severing her vocal cords.
Around the same time, Houston and her family witnessed the Newark race riots. The singer later recalled eating her dinner on the floor while the city was being engulfed by protesters, police officers and gunfire. The aftermath of the riots left the Houston family in what was quickly becoming an unsafe environment. Houston's parents were on the road shortly afterwards to bring in much needed income so they could move elsewhere.
A former bodyguard of Houston's, Kevin Ammons, claimed that Houston and her two elder brothers were latchkey kids. However, Houston's mother countered that the children were looked after by close neighbors Ellen White and Phyllis Hardaway throughout this period. White in particular was so close to the family that Cissy nicknamed her "Bae" (short for "baby") while Houston and her siblings called her "Aunt Bae".
In 1970, after her mother signed a lucrative solo recording deal, Houston's family relocated to East Orange, settling at what was then a mixed-race, middle-class neighborhood called Dodd Street, which was sometimes referred to as "Doddtown".
During this period, Houston began attending Franklin School. During her third grade year, Houston began to be the target of black female bullies who picked on her for wearing long haired braids, plaid dresses and having a lighter skinned complexion. Houston eventually was forced to fight the bullies by her mother. Houston, who had exhibited a friendly attitude early in childhood, began to be much more isolated as she got older. In 1987, the then 23-year-old singer told Time magazine: "I finally faced the fact that it isn't a crime not having friends. Being alone means you have fewer problems. When I decided to be a singer, my mother warned me I'd be alone a lot. Basically we all are. Loneliness comes with life." Said her cousin Dionne in the same article of Houston and the entire family: "You don't get in unless we let you in." Houston said years later that her mother told her, "Whitney, sometimes you have to be your own best friend. Sometimes you're better off just being by yourself." Houston was considered "shy" by her teenage years; when she went to her senior high school prom in 1981, she had to be "talked into it" since she "wasn't a heavy dater." Houston's date at the senior prom was with a boy named Richie, who was gay.
During this era, Houston began to develop her faith. Her mother was a member and the music minister at Newark's New Hope Baptist Church. Though her father John had been raised Catholic, Houston, like her mother, became a devout Baptist. She recalled to her mother that she became "saved" as a teenager while attending a Pentecostal church nearby and "accepted Jesus into [her] life" and would hold on to her faith during difficult times. Houston would be open about her faith early in her career. In July 1986, the then 22-year-old performer told Ebony magazine, "I believe in God, the Almighty. If you just anchor yourself with God, you can resist a lot of temptations. Prayer helps a lot." When Houston was thirteen, she was transferred from Franklin Elementary to an all-girls Catholic school, Mount Saint Dominic Academy, in nearby Caldwell but felt out of place there due to being one of the very few black students there in the predominantly white school. In 1981, Houston, aged 17, graduated from the school.
During her years in New Hope, Houston was constantly under the tutelage of her mother, having been part of the church's children's choir since the age of five and had also learned how to play the piano there. By her preteens, Houston was being groomed by her mother to sing solos after she told her mother she wanted to pursue a career in music. In November 1975, at 12 years of age, Houston made her public performance solo debut at New Hope singing the church hymn, "Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah". The performance was received well by the congregation. According to the singer, they were "Holy Ghost fired out" from her performance, which further encouraged Houston to pursue a singing career.
Alleged child abuse by Dee Dee Warwick In the 2018 documentary film Whitney, directed by Kevin Macdonald, Houston's personal assistant Mary Jones claimed Houston was sexually abused by her cousin, Grammy-nominated soul singer Dee Dee Warwick.