Daughter treads in Whitney Houston’s tragic footsteps
Bobbi Kristina Brown wanted to emulate mother Whitney's life, and is now fighting for her life
The parallels are haunting: Bobbi Kristina Brown and her mother, Whitney Houston, were both found face-down in bathtubs as the music industry prepared for the Grammy Awards.
Both lived in the constant glare of entertainment industry attention, both struggled with drugs; both married men criticised by family and friends as wrong for them.
As the pop star's 21-year-old daughter lay hospitalised on Monday, police in Roswell, Georgia, issued an incident report saying only that they were called on Saturday to her home in suburban Atlanta in response to "a drowning," and had secured the scene for investigators.
"Bobbi Kristina is fighting for her life and is surrounded by immediate family," the Houston family said in a statement on Monday. "We are asking you to honour our request for privacy during this difficult time. Thank you for your prayers, well wishes, and we greatly appreciate your continued support."
With no details forthcoming from police or family about her condition or what may have caused the tragedy, many people looked to see what she's been posting online. Her last tweet, from Thursday, reflected obvious frustration over her failure to succeed as an entertainer.
Two days later, her unresponsive body was discovered, in circumstances eerily similar to her mother's death.
On February 11, 2012, just before the Grammys, Houston's assistant found the singer's body face-down in a foot of water in her tub at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Authorities found prescription drug bottles in the suite and listed heart disease and cocaine as contributors, but concluded she accidentally drowned.
Bobbi Kristina, then 18, was outside Houston's room, and became so distraught that she needed to be hospitalised.
"She wasn't only a mother, she was a best friend," she told Oprah shortly after her mother's death in 2012.
But Houston was an impossible act to follow for her daughter, who identified herself on Twitter as "Daughter of Queen WH," and "LAST of a dying breed."
Houston had her first No 1 hit by the time she was 22, followed by a flurry of chart topping songs, selling more than 50 million records in the US alone. Her voice, an ideal blend of power, grace and beauty, made classics out of songs like , , and . She won six Grammys.
Bobbi Kristina inherited her mother's entire estate, but not her voice. Aside from the crew of her family's short-lived reality TV show , she has mostly appeared in online selfies and images captured by paparazzi.
She told Oprah that she wanted to sing, act and dance, like her mother - and that she was coping as best she could.
But in the years after her mother's death, she made more headlines for drug use, weight loss and family disputes.
Houston met R&B star Bobby Brown at the Soul Train Music Awards in 1989. The gifted singer and her bad boy partner married in 1992, much to the dismay of Houston's family.
A year later, she gave birth to Bobbi Kristina, and her drug use took off. When her daughter was only a toddler, Houston told that she was a "functioning junkie". Her husband's struggles have been well-chronicled, and around 2002, the family decamped to the Atlanta area, drawn to a healing service by a singer-turned evangelical preacher.
