Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today.
Already a member?
Log in
Dolly Parton reportedly allowed only one person to see her on her deathbed.
The “9 to 5” singer, who died in August aged 80, had requested that nobody apart from her longtime makeup and wig artist, Cheryl Riddle, see her on her deathbed because she didn’t want her loved ones to remember her in a fragile state, sources told TMZ.
The outlet also reported that Parton had requested an open casket at her funeral and wanted to be done up by Riddle after she passed.
The Independent has contacted a representative for Parton’s estate for comment.
Throughout her career, Parton was known for her glam makeup and her signature peroxide wigs, and she famously slept in a full face of makeup every night.
In her 2023 book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestone, Parton wrote about how she had slept in her makeup since the 1980s so that she was ready to leave her home in an emergency.
“It doesn’t matter when you clean your face as long as you clean it once a day,” she wrote. “After I wake up, I do all the little rituals, and then I start over again and go out every day and look good all day long.”
In Behind the Seams, Parton opened up about how she started to love makeup as a child. She would find ways to create makeup from pokeberries and plants she found in the fields.
“I would strike Mama’s old kitchen matches to make eyebrows and my beauty mark,” she said in her book. “Still, I find myself mixing and matching different makeups for different colors.”
Parton’s style became a recognizable and distinct brand that no musician has come close to replicating. At the time of her death, Parton reportedly had more than 350 wigs, a collection managed by Riddle. She also had more than 2,000 pairs of shoes and a 50,000-square-foot archive of sequined stage outfits.
Riddle worked with Parton for more than 40 years and was responsible for being her hairstylist on several credited film projects, including Parton’s Christmas movies, including 2020’s A Holly Dolly Christmas and 1990’s Dolly Parton: Christmas at Home.
Parton was hospitalized at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville with “kidney and autoimmune issues” five days before she died. It was later revealed she had died after “a brief battle with cancer.” The type of cancer has not been disclosed.
Parton was laid to rest at Woodlawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum in Nashville. She was buried next to Carl Dean, her husband of 60 years, who died in March 2025.
