A childhood affected by poverty and abuse.
A lifelong struggle with body image.
The sudden death of her brother.
These are just a few of the tragic details of Queen Latifah's life.
Queen Latifah, born Dana Owens, was raised in the projects of New Jersey, and her family
struggled to make ends meet.
In her book "Put on Your Crown," she described the difficulties she faced as a result of
being raised in poverty, writing -
"As a teenager growing up in a working class neighborhood in Newark, I also made some moves
I'm not proud of.
Money was tight, and I experimented with stuff that could have taken me right down into the
gutter if I'd continued with it."
As she explained to The New York Times, being raised in the projects wasn't all bad, but
growing up in such an environment could potentially have drawn her down the wrong path if she
hadn't had a strong support network from her family.
"In growing up in an inner city, you tend to encounter a lot of things, uh crime is
one of the things you tend to encounter at a young age."
Subsequently, witnessing the pitfalls of poverty first hand instilled Latifah with a strong
sense of justice for the poor, as she told Good Housekeeping -
"It became my goal to buy my parents houses, and I did."
But it wasn't solely her family she wanted to help once she made it big.
Her environment propelled her toward a desire to do good and help those in need as well.
Latifah told Interview magazine -
"I want to build a housing development, a big one, a real def one, and pay for people
myself.
[...] Not for my friends; they can do it on their own.
I'm talking about lower-income families."
Queen Latifah's father, Lancelot Owens, was conscripted to the Vietnam War.
According to NPR, 40% of those sent to fight in Vietnam were African-American, and racial
discrimination was rife.
As was sadly common for Vietnam veterans, Owens struggled with mental health issues
and substance misuse following his experiences in the war.
As Latifah told The New York Times -
"He wasn't there at some points, financially, when we could have used his help.
Vietnam had a lot to do with that, and he was dealing with a drug problem at that time.
He was able to work through that stuff."
Latifah's father and her mom, Rita, divorced when she was 8.
In an interview with The Virginian-Pilot, Latifah largely blamed the dissolution of
her parents' marriage on Vietnam, saying -
"He was a big, hard-nosed cop.
Vietnam did a few things to his life.
Eventually he left the family."
Thereafter, Latifah and her brother were raised by their single mother.
Initially, Rita had to juggle domestic duties whilst working two jobs, but she eventually
trained as a high school teacher.
Latifah has credited her mom for ensuring her children thrived despite the grueling
situation.
As she told The New York Times -
"Any person who can take two kids basically without any support from their father and
put them through Catholic school, because she felt they deserved a better education,
is doing all right."
When Queen Latifah was a child, she was molested by a teenage babysitter.
The star told Essence -
"He violated me.
I never told anybody; I just buried it as deeply as I could and kept people at an arm's
distance.
I never really let a person get too close to me.
I could have been married years ago, but I had a commitment issue."
In a "Larry King Live" interview on CNN, she revealed that she was just 5 years old when
the abuse occurred.
As is common with survivors of child sexual abuse, Latifah was scared to tell her parents
about what happened and thus kept it a secret until adulthood.
She explained that the abuser was known to the family, revealing -
"To tell my father, because I'm like, my father's going to kill him, you know, and [...] I don't
want to do that, but I had to [...] let them know what I [had] gone through, so that they
could understand maybe more of my mindset, and freed myself of that burden."
At the age of 22, Latifah was able to tell her parents.
She revealed to Essence -
"My mother felt terrible.
[…] When I told my dad, he said nothing."
On reflection, Latifah told the outlet that she now realized why her dad remained silent
upon hearing the news, saying -
"He's a man of action."
As Queen Latifah recounted on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," both she and her brother were bullied
at school.
She said -
"As kids, we kind of kept it to ourselves.
We tried to handle it on our own.
And sometimes, it got out of control."
In particular, kids targeted Latifah's body shape.
She told Us Weekly -
"I was always the biggest girl in my class.
[…] One thing I was self‑conscious about was my breasts.
I thought they were so big.
Then when I was 18 or 19, I dated somebody who just loved my body down, you know.
Someone who just praised and adored my body constantly.
That really turned me around."
"You are such an amazing woman.
I'm serious, I mean any man that gets you is gonna be, beyond lucky."
Body negativity unfortunately followed Latifah into adulthood.
She told Entertainment Tonight that people judging her body caused her to frequently
think about her weight.
When Latifah embarked on an acting career, she was told to lose weight for roles due
to Hollywood's arguably unrealistic body standards, especially for women.
She revealed -
"I can remember specifically doing 'Living Single' and the word came down that we needed
to lose weight.
[…] If anything it angered me and disheartened me, but it really angered me.
I said, 'We are what women look like, we're not going to lose weight for whoever's idea
of what we're supposed to look like.'"
Queen Latifah's darkest moment came when her beloved brother, police officer Lancelot Owens
Jr., died in an off-duty motorcycle accident in 1992 at the age of 23.
As she told Good Housekeeping -
"My life was rocked to the core.
[…] And I felt guilty because I was angry at God."
To make a tragic experience even more painful, Latifah had bought the very bike on which
her brother died.
Opening up about the tragedy to The New York Times, Latifah acknowledged the lingering
nature of grief, saying -
"I don't know if I ever recovered completely.
[…] You can't replace a person, especially someone with a big presence like my brother.
We were best friends."
Since her brother didn't live to see her success, Latifah revealed that the loss had left her
with a sense of bitterness, saying -
"I felt like all these great things were happening, but I lost the most important thing to me.
If that's the price I had to pay, I didn't want it."
For the sake of her family, and to honor her brother's legacy, she was able to slowly heal.
As a result of her grief, Queen Latifah found herself in the midst of a mental health crisis,
telling Us Weekly in 1998 -
"The last four or five years of my life have been the hardest, after my brother died.
That screwed me up for real.
I thought I was crazy.
I felt out of touch with other people on the planet."
In a deep depression, she turned to alcohol, though this outlet provided little relief
and may have done more harm than good, as she told Good Housekeeping -
"Every day I would be faded, like a painting that's just not vibrant, whose edges are dull.
I wasn't living my full life."
Eventually, she sought help for her depression and alcohol use, finding comfort in faith,
telling Larry King on CNN -
"God just pulled my skirt a little bit and said, wake up, girl.
Get it together, you know."
Following her recovery, Latifah has raised awareness of mental illness and emphasized
the importance of prioritizing mental wellbeing, particularly for Black women, who have historically
faced discrimination and ignorance with regard to mental health.
She told SheKnows -
"I think it's very important that we, especially as Black women, don't hold back about being
honest about what we're feeling — not just what we're feeling physically, but what we're
feeling emotionally.
These things are all tied together, and they can all affect each other."
Queen Latifah once told The New York Times -
"I learned early that I had to work harder than the white kids and harder than the boys,"
During a talk at the Tribeca Film Festival, Latifah described the hip-hop industry as
misogynistic.
Despite this, she was able to make a name for herself in the biz and subsequently earned
praise from male detractors, saying -
"When these gangster rappers praised my work, it drove home the fact that you can make a
difference."
As ABC News highlights, Latifah's music had always been pivotal in challenging misogyny
and standing up for Black lives.
Additionally, Latifah has acknowledged to The New York Times that, despite her fame
and fortune, she is subjected to prevalent racism.
At VH1's Hip Hop Honors, she elaborated on this, saying -
"I don't care how much or things I have, or Puff has, or Missy has.
If I go outside and try to hail a cab and he passes me for the white woman standing
right there, that racism is still alive and kicking.
And we have to change that."
"People are used to doing things the way they're used to doing them.
Change can be uncomfortable, until the change happens."
From a young age, Queen Latifah found herself faced with numerous legal troubles.
As a teenager, she briefly dealt drugs, admitting to The New York Times -
"I did it a couple times to see if I could."
Then, she was paid $50 to sleep with a 40-year-old man when she was just 16.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in 1996, she was arrested on weapon and drug charges.
As the Virginian-Pilot notes, she was not prosecuted for possession of marijuana — though
she was fined $810 for driving with no license and carrying a loaded weapon.
Regarding the latter charge, she told Us Weekly -
"Someone like me has got to have protection."
It was also during this time that her friend and would-be collaborator, Tupac Shakur, was
killed.
Latifah told the Spokesman-Review -
"This is a great American tragedy.
Not just for the Black community, for everybody.
Everyone was magnetized by him."
According to MTV, Latifah was arrested in 2002 for misdemeanor reckless driving, to
which she pleaded no contest and avoided a DUI charge.
Opening up about her troubled past to Larry King on CNN, she explained that her second
arrest spurred her to re-evaluate her life, stating -
"I was not actually impaired, but I was over the legal limit.
And it just made me think, that's not responsible.
That's not the right thing to do.
Wake up.
Get it together, you know.
I'm fine with checking myself […] when I'm not doing the right thing."
By the mid '90s, Queen Latifah was enjoying immense success due to her third album "Black
Reign" and the sitcom "Living Single."
But, in 1995, things took a devastating turn when Latifah and her friends were the victims
of a traumatic carjacking.
According to The New York Times, Latifah was in her BMW with her then-boyfriend and bodyguard,
Sean, and her close friend, Lynn, when two armed men approached the vehicle and shot
Sean in the stomach, critically wounding him and stealing Latifah's car.
The Baltimore Sun highlighted Latifah's heroism, as she had hailed a cab and rushed Sean to
the hospital, despite her trauma.
As a detective told the outlet -
"It was probably what saved his life.
Here she was, a victim of a crime in a stressful situation, and she was cool, calm and collected."
In 1996, a tearful Latifah recalled the horrific incident in court, identifying a main perpetrator,
Ricardo Rodriguez.
Rodriguez was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years for the violent crime he committed
with Rashien Fortune, who shot Sean Moon.
Queen Latifah was extremely close to her mother, Rita.
As she said on CNN's "Larry King Live"
"She's just like my best friend.
There's nothing that I can't talk to her about."
When Rita became ill with heart failure and scleroderma, a rare autoimmune disease, Latifah
took on caregiver duties.
Initially, she was frightened when her mom received the latter diagnosis, telling Good
Housekeeping -
"That was terrifying because now we had to figure out, 'what does it mean to have this
autoimmune disease?'
I had never heard of scleroderma before."
According to AARP, Latifah first took on caregiver duties in 2004, after her mom fell ill while
working as a school teacher.
Latifah explained to the organization that she wanted to make her mother as comfortable
as possible, cooking her healthy meals and managing her medication.
Speaking with People, Latifah opened up about the difficulties of being a caregiver, but
also praised her mom's resilience in the face of overwhelming adversity, saying -
"I watched her come through so many things, ups and downs, hospitalizations [...] and
bounce back and still maintain this sense of humor, and love and drive and will."
After 14 years of ill health, Queen Latifah's mother died in 2018, aged 69.
As she said in a statement to People -
"Anyone that has ever met her knows what a bright light she was on this earth.
[…] I am heartbroken but know she is at peace."
Despite her pain at the devastating loss, Latifah told Good Housekeeping that her mother
remains with her, living on through the values she instilled.
She said -
"I learned so much from my mom about being strong, and even though she's not with me,
I carry that strength with me every day."
"The person who has held me to that standard is my mother, for my entire life."
Reflecting on everything her mother gave her, she told People -
"When everything was too heavy for me to bear, I would disappear and call my mother."
Additionally, Latifah said that she shares an otherworldly bond with her mom, saying
-
"She still talks to me.
I know it's going to sound crazy, but I get little signs.
Lights will blink.
Things will flicker."
Queen Latifah has long been a champion of women's rights.
As Consequence highlights, her 1993 single "U.N.I.T.Y."
was a pivotal anthem in addressing domestic violence at a time when such issues were scarcely
discussed, particularly within hip-hop.
As the outlet wrote -
"Countless women [have suffered] in silence so as not to cause more damage to themselves
or the people around them.
With 'U.N.I.T.Y.,' Queen Latifah [...] gave women the courage to speak out about the injustices
they endured on a daily basis."
But at the time, fans had no idea that the profound lyrics were steeped in a tragic reality.
On her eponymous show, Queen Latifah opened up about a very personal experience with domestic
violence.
Sadly, she witnessed her cousin being abused for years by their partner and went on to
say -
"Twenty-one years ago I wrote the song 'U.N.I.T.Y.'
about disrespect and violence towards women.
[...] That entire second verse of that song was written about my cousin who was in an
abusive relationship with her husband."
While her cousin was able to eventually escape the relationship with help from Latifah's
family, Latifah acknowledged that, for many women, escape isn't so easy.
"I wish the message in that song wasn't even relevant today.
But it is."
In addition to empowering women and giving them a voice through her music, Queen Latifah
launched the Queen Collective with Tribeca Film Festival and Procter & Gamble.
The initiative is a program for female, multicultural film directors, whose stories are given support
to be expressed through their art.
In 2021, Queen Latifah was faced with another horrific tragedy when her beloved dog was
apparently found killed.
According to TMZ, Latifah sought the help of "Dog Whisperer" Cesar Millan, bringing
her 2 pups to his psychology class.
However, things took a tragic turn when one of her dogs was allegedly killed when the
canine expert's pit bull attacked it.
Lidia Matiss, who claims she was violently attacked by Millan's pit bull, filed a lawsuit
against the "Dog Whisperer," detailing the alleged attack against Latifah's pup.
According to Matiss, Millan attempted to cover up Latifah's dog's death by urging staff members
to say that Latifah's dog was hit and killed by a car.
The lawsuit alleges that Millan's dog had an extremely violent history.
Latifah and Millan previously appeared to share a close friendship.
In 2014, he appeared on "The Queen Latifah Show" to discuss doggy matters.
In 2018, she expressed her joy at enrolling her new furbabies in training programs with
Millan in a Tweet that seems especially chilling in light of the accusations.
Subsequently, her dog's death, allegedly at the hands of the very person whose expertise
she sought, is particularly tragic.
According to People, Millan denies that his dog killed Latifah's pet, branding the accusation
a lie.
One of Queen Latifah's closest friends was acclaimed actor Michael K. Williams, famed
for his role as Omar Little on "The Wire."
Williams gushed about their friendship in 2018, telling Entertainment Weekly -
"I love her, man."
He went on to credit Latifah with uplifting and encouraging him to pursue his dreams,
saying -
"She was the first thing to inspire me.
She was the first person that I saw in my life that made [success] tangible."
During Williams' appearance on "The Queen Latifah Show," the host revealed that the
pair had been friends since she was 16.
In what would be Williams' final stint on the show, the longtime pals reminisced about
old times, with Williams paying a warm tribute to Latifah, saying -
"Dana never took no mess… always strong-minded, strong-willed, and she could pack a punch."
"Loving, caring, and um, just sincere… and could PARTY!"
"WHOOOO!"
Tragically, Latifah lost her buddy in 2021.
According to the New York Post - Williams was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment at
age 54.
The actor died from an apparent drug overdose.
Latifah took to Instagram to express her heartache regarding her sadly departed friend, writing
in a touching tribute -
"Your Heart has always been So Big.
Thank you for sharing it with so many.
The world will miss your talent, but I will miss your silly laugh!
I Love You Mike and I will Always be proud of you."
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available.
Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact
SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).