The flags came down across the country for a woman who started out in a one-room cabin in the Tennessee mountains. Dolly Parton — songwriter, movie star, businesswoman, giver-away of millions — died peacefully in Nashville, Tennessee, on August 25, 2026, at 80.

President Donald Trump, calling her one of the finest country singers who ever lived, directed that the American flag be flown at half-staff nationwide for a week beginning at 6 p.m. “There has never been anyone like her, and never will,” Trump wrote. “Rest in Peace, Dolly! The World loves you.”

Word of her death came from Bryan Seaver, her nephew and the head of her security detail, in a post on the singer’s Instagram account; her publicist confirmed it. Her family did not disclose a cause, and only relatives will attend a private service. Describing the announcement as an honor tinged with both pride and grief, Seaver said, “I have imagined the heaviness of this moment but haven’t truly felt it until now.”

From a One-Room Cabin to Nashville

She arrived on January 19, 1946, in rural East Tennessee, child number four out of 12 born to Robert Lee Parton, who farmed and worked construction, and Avie Lee Parton, the parent she said gave her the music in her. The family’s hard-up years supplied her with material for the rest of her life. “Coat of Many Colors” recounts the jacket her mother stitched from leftover scraps — clothing the girl wore proudly while schoolmates mocked her for it.

Her first instrument was a mandolin strung with bass guitar strings. An uncle gave her an actual guitar when she was eight. She sang in her grandfather’s church, appeared on local television by 10 and cut a record at 13 — the same year country star Johnny Cash introduced her at the Grand Ole Opry as a little girl from up in East Tennessee.

Diploma in hand in 1964, she headed for Nashville with a suitcase of songs, trailing her uncle Bill Owens, himself a songwriter. Producer Fred Foster, who had worked with singers Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson, placed her material with other acts and then had her cut the songs herself. A 1965 contract briefly recast her as a pop singer, a strategy that fizzled; country came next, and with it her debut LP, “Hello, I’m Dolly.” She married Carl Dean in May 1966. He died March 3, 2025; the pair had renewed their vows in 2016 for their 50th anniversary.

The Songs and the Screen

What made her a star was the partnership she struck in 1967 with Porter Wagoner, the country singer and TV host, beginning with the duet “The Last Thing On My Mind.” Wagoner pushed for her recording contract, and his syndicated series doubled as an acting classroom. She also opened her own publishing firm that year. “Joshua” delivered her first country No. 1 in 1971 as “Coat of Many Colors” reached the Top 5. “Jolene,” released in 1973, hit No. 7 in the United Kingdom, her first success there. She wrote that song and “I Will Always Love You” on the same day.

The latter was her goodbye to Wagoner. It went to No. 1 on the country chart in 1974 and repeated the feat with a 1982 re-recording. When singer Whitney Houston cut it in 1992 for “The Bodyguard,” the result became the biggest-selling single ever by a woman, at roughly 20 million copies.

“Here You Come Again,” her first album to sell a million copies, arrived in 1977, and its title track won the first of 11 Grammy Awards she would collect. In 1980 she scored three consecutive country No. 1s, including “9 to 5,” which also topped the US pop chart and picked up an Academy Award nomination. The movie it came from launched her acting career opposite actors Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin; roughly nine films followed, among them “Steel Magnolias” in 1989, along with two Golden Globe nominations. “Islands in the Stream,” her 1983 pairing with country singer Kenny Rogers, hit No. 1 on the pop chart.

Nobody else has landed on the charts in seven different decades. She holds the record with 25 No. 1 country singles and put 47 albums in the country Top 10. In 1978 she took home the Country Music Association’s Entertainer of the Year trophy, an honor claimed by only six women. The Country Music Hall of Fame took her in during 1999, the National Medal of Arts followed in 2005, and Rolling Stone ranked her 27th when it published its 200 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2023.

Saint Dolly and Her Giving

Fans called her Saint Dolly. The Dollywood Foundation, launched in 1988, aimed at keeping kids in her home county in school. By the early 1990s, seventh and eighth graders there were promised $500 apiece if they made it to graduation; the dropout rate for those students fell from 35 percent to 6 percent. Her Imagination Library, begun in 1995 and named for a father who never learned to read or write, mails a book each month to close to 850,000 enrolled children from infancy through kindergarten and has handed out more than 150 million books.

After wildfires tore through the Great Smoky Mountains in 2016, she sent about 900 displaced families $1,000 monthly for six months and organized a telethon. She gave Vanderbilt University $1 million in 2020 toward Covid-19 vaccine research. Forbes pegged her wealth at $450 million in June 2025, placing her 78th on its ranking of America’s richest self-made women.

Health Setbacks and Unfinished Plans

A six-day Las Vegas residency announced in June 2025 for that December never happened. She moved it to September 2026 after physicians scheduled procedures that September, then canceled the run outright earlier in 2026 because of what she described as health challenges. She had long struggled with kidney stones, she said, and problems with digestion and her immune system had piled on — though she noted that, according to her physicians, none of her conditions was untreatable.

At Dollywood’s season opening in early 2026, she acknowledged a few lingering problems and said she was putting herself back together spiritually, emotionally and physically while grieving her husband. Her projects were still moving: a museum and hotel planned for Nashville, plus “Dolly: A True Original Musical,” her Broadway production scheduled for a New York premiere before the end of 2026.

She is survived by six of her 11 siblings — Willadeene, Robert Jr., Stella, Cassie, Freida and Rachel.