- Anna Nicole Smith died from an accidental drug overdose in a hotel room at the age of 39 in 2007.
- Her death came less than five months after her son Daniel, 20, died and her daughter was born.
Anna Nicole Smith rose to prominence in the 1990s as a Playboy Playmate and became a regular fixture of the tabloids thanks to her party girl persona and eyebrow-raising marriage at the age of 26 to 89-year-old Houston oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall.
The inheritance lawsuit that followed Marshall's death in 1995, 14 months after they tied the knot, as well as her early 2000s reality show then furthered her celebrity, making her both a household name and a national laughing stock.
As a new Netflix documentary, "Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me," attempts to shed new light on Smith's life and legacy, here's everything you need to know about the model's tragic death.
Smith had a history of substance abuse going back to the early 1990s
In "You Don't Know Me," Smith's friend and supposed former lover Missy Byrum claimed that Smith's addiction to prescription drugs started after she got breast augmentation surgery when she was in her early twenties.
"Valium, Xanax, Lortabs, Vicodin, and Klonopin," said Byrum. "From that time on she was always taking them. There was nothing she could do to stop it."
Byrum claimed that, by the early 1990s, Smith was a "full-blown drug addict" and the documentary showed that in 1994, Smith had survived an accidental overdose in a Hollywood hotel room.
The Playboy model and actor died in a hotel room in Florida
Smith was found in an unresponsive state on February 8, 2007, according to The New York Times.
A private nurse, who an episode of "The Final 24" identified as the wife of Smith's bodyguard, made several resuscitation attempts before paramedics made it to the scene. However, Smith was pronounced dead by the time she was taken to the hospital that same afternoon.
An investigation into Smith's death, led by Broward County Medical Examiner and forensic pathologist Joshua Perper concluded that the model and actress died of "combined drug intoxication."
The autopsy report said that the primary drug in her system was chloral hydrate, which is a particularly potent sedative that also contributed to the death of her idol Marilyn Monroe.
The coroner ruled out suicide as a potential cause of death, as per the New York Times, Smith's friends told Perper she was in "outstanding general spirits" in the days preceding, even though she was still mourning the death of her son.
The documentary claimed that Smith had made several attempts to take her own life in the throes of her grief.
She was buried at the Lakeview Memorial Gardens & Mausoleum in the Bahamas, alongside her son. Her late husband also has his ashes buried in her casket.
Her son also died of an accidental overdose
Smith's son Daniel — whom she had welcomed with her first husband Billy Smith in 1986 — died on September 10, 2006, five months before his mother's passing and just three days after his younger sister Dannielynn's birth.
Daniel, who was 20 at the time, had been visiting Smith in the Bahamas in the days following Dannielynn's arrival. Per a CNN report, he had died while spending the night in his mother's hospital room and she had been the one to discover his body the following morning.
Hospital personnel made attempts to revive him and after they stopped and ruled him officially dead, Smith "who could not accept his death" took over. The outlet noted that she eventually had to be sedated.
His cause of death was later determined to be an accidental drug overdose, according to Reuters.
Smith's death led to a fierce custody battle over her daughter, who people believed was set to inherit millions
As the documentary chronicles, after Smith's death, there was renewed interest in finding out the father of her then 4-month-old baby daughter. As Smith's sole surviving heir, she was set to inherit any money that Smith was entitled to from the estate of her late husband.
Howard K. Stern, Smith's lawyer who had been living with her in the Bahamas at the time of her death, and was named on Dannielynn's birth certificate, claimed that he was the father, while entertainment photographer Larry Birkhead filed a lawsuit to prove that he was.
Others such as Alexander Denk, a former bodyguard and chef for Smith, also made a claim of paternity as did Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, who emerged in the days following Smith's death to say that he had a decade-long affair with the model and could potentially be the dad.
After a DNA test took place, it was determined that Birkhead was Dannielynn's biological father and he gained sole custody. In 2014, seven years after Smith's death, her estate failed in its final bid to obtain her late husband's money.
"Anna Nicole Smith: You Don't Know Me" is now available to stream on Netflix.