The only daughter of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie Presley was not just the King’s only heir, she was a famous one. But these glittery details of her life — which included relationships with Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage — failed to hide the fact that at the end of the day, her life story has become a haunting tragedy.
Those who were close to Lisa Marie knew that life was never an easy journey for the singer. It started with her parents separating after she turned four, then losing her father at 9 — she was present at Elvis’ Graceland house at the time of his death, unable to understand what happened to her father, and as she would later admit in a Rolling Stone 2003 interview, as a teen she went into a “self-destructo mode,” doing drugs and going “on a rampage.”
“I’ve dealt with death, grief and loss since the age of 9 years old. I’ve had more than anyone’s fair share of it in my lifetime and somehow, I’ve made it this far. … It’s a real choice to keep going, one that I have to make every single day and one that is constantly challenging to say the least.”
– via People
Lisa Marie Presley’s inability to find “normal” life after Elvis’ death
Lisa Marie tried to live a low-key life, working normal jobs, but that came to an end when voracious Elvis fans outed her information, bringing her plan of keeping it a secret out the window. With music in her blood, and its very soul surrounding her as she grew up, Lisa dabbled in music as well, but whether it was the taxing task of asserting her own style as the daughter of the King, matching his massive legacy, her failed marriage with musician Danny Keough, the birth of her two children, or her second marriage to Michael Jackson — where she became “part of a PR machine” and the singer’s second choice after drugs — her music career hit many pitfalls.
Though her career eventually gathered steam, and the L.A. music business of the mid-nineties saw Lisa Marie rising as a recording artist in her own right, it was marked with its own stretches of quicksand that left her scrambling to find something to hold onto. She fell into an opioid addiction after she was prescribed painkillers after giving birth, faced a breakup with Capitol, her music label, endured her messy fourth divorce, and left Elvis Presley Enterprises drowning in $20 million debt because of Lisa’s “continuous, excessive spending,” as per the firm handling EPE’s finances.
But the unsustainable trauma may have been her son, Benjamin Keough’s death. He committed suicide at the age of 27.
Lisa’s inclination towards music persisted, but the enthusiasm faltered in the wake of losing her son. She was hardly seen in public after his death, and would mark her first (and last) high-profile presence on Jan. 10, 2023, for the Golden Globes in Beverly Hills, California, to support Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis.
How did Lisa Marie Presley die?
On Jan. 12, 2023, Lisa went into cardiac arrest and died from complications from a bariatric surgery she had undergone several years earlier. At the time of her death, she had been in the process of writing her memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, and was being assisted by her daughter, Riley Keough, in completing it, unaware that the task would be on her shoulders after her mother’s sudden passing at the age of 54.
But Riley did complete what Lisa started — her memoir was published in October 2024, and has already found eager readers, as Oprah Winfrey picked her “intimate” life story as her new book club pick. While Riley knows that her mother would feel “incredibly vulnerable” about the exposure, surely Lisa Marie would also be grateful and proud that her story is finally being told.