Whitney Elizabeth Houston was an American singer and actor. She holds the Guinness World Record as the most awarded female artist of all time, and remains a best-seller with 220 million records sold worldwide.
With the guidance of Arista Records chairman Clive Davis, she signed to the label at the age of 19. Her first two studio albums, Whitney Houston (1985) and Whitney (1987), both reached number one on the Billboard 200 in the United States and became two of the world's best-selling albums of all time. She became the only artist to have seven consecutive number-one singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, from "Saving All My Love for You" in 1985 to "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" in 1988.
Houston made her screen acting debut in the romantic thriller film The Bodyguard (1992). She recorded seven songs for the film's soundtrack, including "I Will Always Love You", which received the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and became both the best-selling female single in music history and the best-selling soundtrack in history.
She went on to star in Waiting to Exhale (1995) and The Preacher's Wife (1996).
Houston died in 2012 at the age of 48, having accidentally drowned in her bathtub due to a heart attack likely brought on by a combination of heart disease and cocaine use.
In his 2016 memoir Every Little Step: My Story, Houston's ex-husband Bobby Brown talked about Whitney Houston's bisexuality. He claimed that he knew about her relationship with Robyn Crawford, one of Houston’s close associates. He speculated that Whitney and Robyn denied the relationship because Whitney's mother would disapprove.
After years of silence, Crawford confirmed her romantic relationship with Whitney Houston in her 2019 memoir A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston. In 2022, the biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody was released, delving into her journey to stardom, personal challenges, and addressing her bisexuality.