Rihanna’s father Ronald Fenty died in Los Angeles last month from a combination of respiratory failure and pancreatic cancer, according to a death certificate obtained by TMZ.
The father of Rihanna, 71, died at a hospital while “surrounded by family” following what was described as a “brief illness.”
The official document listed multiple causes of death, including aspiration pneumonia—a severe lung infection—along with acute renal failure and acute tubular necrosis, both of which point to severe kidney damage.
Fenty, who lived in Barbados, had kept a relatively low profile in recent years due to his strained relationship with his superstar daughter.
“I was so angry at him,” Rihanna told Oprah Winfrey during an interview in 2012, where she revealed she had repaired their relationship. “I was just angry about a lot of things from my childhood and I couldn’t separate him as a husband from him as a father.
She added, “I felt like if he was a bad husband, he was a bad father. I witnessed a lot of things in my childhood in my household.”
They did eventually reconcile and Ronald shared his joy publicly when Rihanna, 37, announced her second pregnancy during the 2023 Super Bowl Halftime Show.
At the time, he told TMZ he was “over the moon.”
The Grammy Award-winning singer has not yet issued a public statement regarding her father’s death. She is currently expecting her third child with A$AP Rocky, with whom she shares two sons—RZA, 3, and Riot, who is nearly 2 years old.
Ronald Fenty died in Los Angeles in May 2024.