Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy bunny, reality television star and model, was pronounced dead today at the Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Fla.

Born in Houston, Texas, as Vickie Lynn Hogan in 1967, the young Smith once said she grew up dreaming of being a latter-day Marilyn Monroe.

Like Monroe, she would eventually model for Playboy.

Like Monroe, she would be dead before she was 40.               

                                                                                          Donna Hogan, released a statement to the media a short while after her death was announced:

“On behalf of the Hogan Family, we are saddened and heartbroken by my sister’s death. No matter what our differences have been over the years, Anna was still our blood and she will be missed terribly. She was a woman who was determined to get out of her small town in Texas and make a name for herself. She became an international star and she was a good mother to Daniel; there is no doubt that her son loved her. They lived out of each other’s pockets while he was alive and now they can finally be together again in Heaven. We feel that the death of her son left her deeply saddened, a sadness she hid from everyone. As a mother of three children, I am anguished by this tragic event and the fact that her new baby daughter Dannielynn Hope is now without a mother. “ ANNA WILL BE MISSED…….