Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of rock 'n' roll legend Elvis Presley, died Thursday after being hospitalized for a medical emergency. She was 54.
“It is with a heavy heart that I must share the devastating news that my beautiful daughter Lisa Marie has left us,” Priscilla Presley said in a statement. "She was the most passionate, strong and loving woman I have ever known.”
Earlier on Thursday, Lisa Marie was rushed to a Los Angeles hospital after a medical episode at her home.
The Los Angeles County Fire Department confirmed crews responded at 10:37 a.m. to a home in the 5000 block of Normandy Drive in Los Angeles' west San Fernando Valley. The department described the patient only as a woman in mid-50s, suffering cardiac arrest. Responders were able to find a pulse, and she was transported by ambulance, officials told NBC News.
Lisa Marie was at the Golden Globes on Tuesday to support Austin Butler, who won the best actor in a Drama award for playing her father in director Baz Luhrmann's film "Elvis." Just days before, she was in Memphis at Graceland — the mansion where Elvis lived, and died — to celebrate her father's birth anniversary on Jan. 8.
She followed in her father's footsteps professionally, releasing her own rock albums in the 2000s, and appearing on stage with Pat Benatar and Richard Hawley among others.
Her birth on Feb. 1, 1968, nine months exactly after her parents' wedding, was international news.
Lisa Marie was 9 years old when her father died in August 1977. She told Rolling Stone in a 2003 interview that she was home with him at Graceland and "had a feeling" something was wrong when he kissed her good night. The following morning, he was found dead facedown in the bathroom.
“All I know is I had it [a feeling], and it happened," she told Rolling Stone. "I was obsessed with death at a very early age.”
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Over the next few decades, Lisa Marie made headlines of her own, with struggles with drug abuse and some very public marriages. Her four husbands included Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage.
Presley had two children with former husband Danny Keough, actor Riley Keough, born in 1989, and Benjamin Keough, born in 1992. Benjamin Keough died by suicide in 2020 at the age of 27. Presley was vocal about her grief, writing in an essay last August that she had “been living in the horrific reality of its unrelenting grips since my son’s death two years ago.”
She also had twin daughters, Harper and Finley Lockwood, with ex-husband Michael Lockwood in 2008.
Her marriage to Lockwood would end in a combative and protracted divorce that began in 2016 and still was not resolved when she died, though they were declared single in 2021. The fight saw the girls, now 15, put temporarily in protective custody in 2017. Presley and Lockwood later had joint custody, but were still at odds over the issue, with Lockwood seeking more child support from Presley.
Lisa Marie became the sole heir of the Elvis Presley Trust after her father died. Along with Elvis Presley Enterprises, the trust managed Graceland and other assets until she sold her majority interest in 2005. She retained ownership of Graceland Mansion itself, the 13 acres around it and items inside the home. Her son is buried there, along with her father and other members of the Presley family.
Lisa Marie Presley is a former Scientologist — her son was born in 1992 under guidelines set by Church of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, according to an AP story at the time — but later broke with Scientology.
Lisa Marie and Priscilla Presley would make regular trips to Graceland during huge fan celebrations on the anniversaries of Elvis' death and birthday. One of the two airplanes at Graceland is named the Lisa Marie.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
