Whitney Houston
Known as The Voice, Whitney Houston remains the only artist to chart seven consecutive number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100. She sold over 200 million albums, singles, and videos worldwide and was the first Black recording artist to earn three RIAA Diamond-certified albums, and The Bodyguard, certified 19x Platinum in 2025, is the highest RIAA-certified soundtrack of all time. In 1994 she became the first major Western recording artist to perform in the newly unified, post-apartheid South Africa. She joined the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, and in January 2026 the Recording Academy honored her with its Lifetime Achievement Award. Billboard’s Greatest of All Time Hot 100 Artists chart has her at number nine. The Whitney E. Houston Legacy Foundation, formed by her estate in 2020, provides educational opportunities, grants, and scholarships for young people.
The daughter of the singer Cissy Houston, Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born on August 9, 1963, in Newark, New Jersey; her mother and her cousins, the singers Dee Dee and Dionne Warwick, nurtured her love of gospel from birth. In 1983 Clive Davis saw her perform in a New York nightclub and signed her to Arista on the spot. Her self-titled debut arrived in February 1985 and became the best-selling debut album by a solo artist, and it was the first album by a woman to yield three number one Hot 100 hits: “Saving All My Love For You,” “How Will I Know,” and “Greatest Love of All.”
Whitney (June 1987) made her the first female artist to enter the Billboard 200 at number one and carried four more number ones, among them “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).” Her film debut, The Bodyguard (1992), came with a soundtrack that won the Grammy for Album of the Year and spent 20 weeks at number one on the Billboard 200, and her version of Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” became the biggest-selling single by a female artist in history. She went on to star in Waiting to Exhale (1995), whose soundtrack carried the number one “Exhale (Shoop Shoop),” and The Preacher’s Wife (1996), and My Love Is Your Love (1998) produced “Heartbreak Hotel,” “It’s Not Right But It’s Okay,” and “When You Believe,” her duet with Mariah Carey. Her seventh and final studio album, I Look to You (2009), debuted at number one.
Houston’s death came on February 11, 2012. She won six Grammy Awards, among them Record of the Year for “I Will Always Love You,” which is in the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry, and her honors include 22 American Music Awards and the Soul Train Music Awards’ Female Artist of the Decade in 2000. “I Will Always Love You” stands at 94 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time (2021).
In 2019 “Higher Love,” with Kygo, became her first posthumous Hot 100 hit, and the biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody reached theaters in December 2022. In October 2024 The Concert for a New South Africa (Durban), the film of her 1994 concert, played nearly 1,000 theaters in more than 30 countries, and since August 2024 The Voice of Whitney: A Symphonic Celebration, created by the estate and its partner Primary Wave Music, has set her recorded vocals to new arrangements in concert halls. In August 2026 Mattel introduced the Whitney Houston Barbie Signature Doll, unveiled at the fifth annual Legacy of Love Gala.
