The Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith

This February marks the ten-year anniversary of the death of model, actress and Playboy Playmate of the Year, Anna Nicole Smith.

Smith was born Vickie Lynn Hogan, married at 17, a mother at 18, and not long after, separated from her first husband. She worked at Red Lobster, Wal-Mart and a fried chicken restaurant before turning to stripping at a club in Houston.

There she met, J. Howard Marshall, an oil tycoon who quickly fell in love with Smith and helped her out financially when her career began to take off. She made the cover of Playboy magazine, modeled for Guess and H&M and acted in “Naked Gun 33 & A Third.”

While her career was in full swing, 26-year-old Smith married J. Howard Marshall in 1994. He was 89 years old.

“I loved him for so much for what he did for me and my son,” Smith told Larry King on his show in 2002. “I’ve never had love like that before. No one has ever loved me, and done things for me, and respected me and didn’t care about what people said about me.”

Marshall died after only 13 months of marriage but he didn’t name Smith in his will. Smith then began a drawn out legal battle with his family for a piece of Marshall’s multimillion-dollar-estate. The case went on for over a decade and would eventually reach the Supreme Court.

Smith continued a glamourous yet embattled life, making guest appearances on awards shows, repping a diet product and starring in reality TV on E!’s, “The Anna Nicole Show.” Jon Stewart called the show an abomination for continually showing Smith intoxicated without seeming to offer her any help.

In 2006, Smith gave birth to a daughter, but good news soon turned to devastation when her first child, Daniel, died soon after in the same hospital room from an accidental drug overdose.

“Deep in my heart, I knew after Daniel had died, that my friend had gone,” said longtime friend Pol Atteu. “I never saw the willingness to want to live.”

This episode tells the story of her rise to fame and her tragic public downfall that ended in her mysterious death at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in 2007.

“How it Really Happened, The Life and Death of Anna Nicole Smith” airs February 17, 2017 at 9pm ET on HLN