Fallen star: Inside the life of Whitney Houston

The news came as a shock to millions of fans worldwide when it was announced that Whitney Houston had been found dead at the age of 48, partially submerged in her hotel bath tub in Beverly Hills.

But as the sad facts surrounding the star's erratic final days are pieced together, a picture emerges of a woman who had long lost her battle with the drink and drugs demons she had fought for years, as she struggled with the realisation that her legendary voice had gone - ravaged by years of abuse.

And sources close to the singer have come forward to claim that her passing was "not a great surprise", given that just two days before her death she was spotted stumbling out of LA club, Tru, blood dripping from a cut on her knee, perspiring and disorientated, after almost getting into a fight.

Scene looks back at Whitney's life, to reveal why ultimately, in her own words, fame proved "too much"… 

From the choir to the charts

Having joined her local church choir at the age of five, even then, with a gospel singer, Cissy, as her mum, singer, Dionne Warwick as her cousin and soul queen, Aretha Franklin, as her godmother, the talented youngster seemed destined to become a star.

Catching the ear of music mogul, Clive Davis, in 1983, it wasn't until 1986, at the age of 23, that Whitney saw her debut album, Whitney Houston, become Billboard's Number One Album of the Year, herself become the Number One Artist of the Year, and the release become the first album by a female artist to yield three number-one hits.

Going 13-times platinum in the US, the album went on to shift over 25 million units worldwide, making Whitney a household name, role model to millions thanks to her awe-inspiring talent and beauty, and a millionaire. And her follow-up album, 1987's Whitney, along with her subsequent tours, saw the singer take the number eight spot in Forbes' highest-earning entertainers of that year - and be named the third highest African-American earner, behind Bill Cosby and Eddie Murphy. 

The seeds of her struggle

It was the jeering that accompanied her nomination announcement at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards, that brought home to the star the struggle for recognition from her African-American peers her success had not yet given her - with some critics believing she was betraying her black roots by singing ‘white pop' rather than soul.

"Sometimes it gets down to that, you know?" she said in 1996. "You're not black enough for them. I don't know. You're not R&B enough. You're very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them." And the criticism was something the star took to heart, adding a more urban edge to her next album, 1990's I'm Your Baby Tonight.

"Whitney went from the shelter of church straight into the deepest cesspools of fame and celebrity," reasons eTalk's Elaine Lui. "I'm not sure she had a chance." 

Enter Bobby Brown…

Meeting former New Edition singer, Bobby Brown, at the 1989 Soul Train Music Awards, the pair married in 1992, welcoming their daughter, Bobbi Kristina the following year. Their relationship raised plenty of eyebrows in the music industry as the squeaky-clean pop princess fell for the bad boy, leading Whitney to counter, "When you love, you love. I mean, do you stop loving somebody because you have different images? You know, Bobby and I basically come from the same place." Adding, "I am not always in a sequinned gown. I am nobody's angel. I can get down and dirty. I can get raunchy."

Things turned sour with a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993, and the pair would later divorce in 2007, but by then, the singer was in the grip of the drugs many are saying ended her life.

Telling Oprah of how her marriage turned violent, the singer revealed, "He spit on me. He actually spit on me. And my daughter was coming down the stairs and she saw that. I took the phone and I hit him over the head with it."

"[Doing drugs] was an everyday thing," she admitted of her life between 1995-96. "I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was every day. I wasn't happy by that point in time. I was losing myself." 

Failed rehab, failed comebacks

"Her voice was ruined, and her comeback wasn't what it was supposed to be because her voice wasn't what it was supposed to be," insisted a source last week, concerning Whitney's most recent attempt at rehabilitating her career. And it appeared that this year's comeback was one too far for the star.

Having entered rehab three times - in 2004, 2005 and again in May 2011 - Whitney admitted in 2002, "The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy." Later admitting of the party lifestyle which ultimately destroyed her, "I partied my tail off."

And the singer and actress also copped to the pressure she felt under to deliver musically, revealing of her 2009 return with album, I Look To You, after seven years out of the industry, "It was too much. So much to try to live up to, to try to be, and I wanted out."

"As sad as this sounds, it's not a great surprise and yet, it's unbelievable," an industry source told People. "There are demons she fought privately and publicly for many years. She's been on a downward spiral for a long time and when you have people around you that enable the behaviour... she couldn't shake those demons."

Fears grow for daughter

Rushed to hospital twice in the hours following her mother's death, 18-year-old Bobbi Kristina was said by onlookers to be "hysterical, exhausted and inconsolable." And amid growing fears over the teen's apparent hard-partying lifestyle - with images of her sniffing a powder substance to be found on the web, about which she tweeted, "It's really not what it looks like" - TMZ has revealed that Bobbi fell asleep in the bath in her room at the Beverly Hilton the day before her mother was found dead in hers, resulting in security being called to unlock the door and get her out of the tub.

"Krissi is addicted to cocaine. I've tried to stop her, but all she said was, ‘I'm just like my mother!'" a former boyfriend told the National Enquirer. "It was difficult to stop her from buying alcohol and drugs because her mother gave her $1,000 (Dh3,600) a week."

Said to have been placed on suicide watch by concerned family members, insiders say Whitney's family are considering insisting Bobbi go to rehab to deal with her addictions.

What was Whitney on? 

With an eyewitness spilling of Whitney just days before she died, "[She seemed] out of it… like she was on something," insiders have come forward to reveal that the star often took anti-anxiety prescription drug, Xanax, to calm her nerves before performances

"There weren't a lot of prescription bottles [in her hotel room]," said Los Angeles coroner's assistant chief Ed Winter. "You probably have just as many prescription bottles in your medicine cabinet."

Having in the past admitted to using marijuana and cocaine, Whitney famously denied in a 2002 interview that she took highly addictive crack cocaine, insisting, "Crack is whack." But images taken by her sister-in-law of the singer's Atlanta home, showed drugs paraphernalia and pipes used to smoke drugs littering the trashed house.

"It's just really unfortunate that drugs, bad people or bad influence took over," Whitney's fellow singer, Celine Dion, said during a radio interview last week. "When you think about Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe and Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse, to get into drugs like that, for whatever reason. Is it because of the stress and bad influence? What happens when you have everything?"