Whitney Houston, who ruled as pop music's queen has died. She was 48. The cause of her death is unknown.

News of Houston's death came on the eve of music's biggest night — the Grammy Awards. It's a showcase where she once reigned, and her death was sure to case a heavy pall on Sunday's ceremony.

At her peak, Houston the golden girl of the music industry. From the middle 1980s to the late 1990s, she was one of the world's best-selling artists. She wowed audiences with effortless, powerful, and peerless vocals that were rooted in the black church but made palatable to the masses with a pop sheen.

Houston first started singing in the church as a child. With a ferociously powerful voice and a dazzling range, Houston achieved stardom as a pop-soul singer known as 'the Voice' and the 'Queen of Pop' in the 1980s and 1990s.

In her teens, she sang backup for Chaka Khan, Jermaine Jackson and others, in addition to modeling. It was around that time when music mogul Clive Davis first heard Houston perform.

She seemed to be born into greatness. She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston, the cousin of 1960s pop diva Dionne Warwick and the goddaughter of Aretha Franklin.

She had the perfect voice, and the perfect image: a gorgeous singer who had sex appeal but was never overtly sexual, who maintained perfect poise.

Houston's trove of six Grammy awards included one for record of the year - for a soaring cover of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You," and another for album of the year for "The Bodyguard

By the end of her career, Houston became a stunning cautionary tale of the toll of drug use. She confessed to abusing cocaine, marijuana and pills, and her once pristine voice became raspy and hoarse, unable to hit the high notes as she had during her prime.

Houston blamed her rocky marriage to Brown, which included a charge of domestic abuse against Brown in 1993. They divorced in 2007.

She was so startlingly thin during a 2001 Michael Jackson tribute concert that rumors spread she had died the next day. Her crude behavior and jittery appearance on Brown's reality show, Being Bobby Brown, was an example of her sad decline.

"The biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy," Houston told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an infamous 2002 interview. In her marriage to Brown she had a daughter, Bobbi Kristina.

While her fans kept waiting for more recovery and a bigger comeback, Houston broke some hearts with her passing.