Anna Nicole Smith's Daughter Dannielynn Birkhead's Drastic Transformation

The daughter of former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith came into the world amid tragic and complex circumstances. Dannielynn first lost her half-brother, Daniel Smith, when she was just 3 days old and then her mother when she was 5 months old. That was just the beginning of the complicated scenario that was about to unfold. While Smith presumably believed her then-boyfriend and lawyer Howard K. Stern to be her daughter's father, several other men weren't so sure.

Just days after her death, a wild paternity scandal over Anna Nicole's daughter took over the media. After two months of legal battle, a paternity test ruled out Stern as the father. It also excluded three other men to determine Dannielynn was the daughter of freelance photographer Larry Birkhead, seen above. The case garnered a lot of attention as the baby potentially stood to inherit a hefty sum. When Anna Nicole died, she had been fighting over the fortune of her late billionaire husband, 90-year-old J. Howard Marshall.

Following Anna Nicole's death, the legal battle continued on behalf of Dannielynn. Her family ultimately lost. Instead of becoming heiress to a $475 fortune, Dannielynn went on to live a rather normal life away from the spotlight. On September 7, 2024, she became an adult who has completely transformed from the cute blonde baby we saw on the news. She is getting ready for college and has a tight bond with Birkhead. Perhaps leading a regular life is exactly what was best for Dannielynn.

Dannielynn's birth on September 7, 2006, marked a complicated time in Anna Nicole Smith's life. Welcoming her baby girl, whom she originally named Hannah Rose, filled her with joy. But it lasted just three days. On September 10, 2006, her 20-year-old son, Daniel Wayne Smith, was found dead from an accidental prescription drug overdose in her hospital room in the Bahamas, where he had traveled to visit his mom and meet his baby sister.

Anna Nicole found him. "It would appear from our report that the mother had gotten up, saw him in the chair and he appeared to be sound asleep," Assistant Commissioner Reginald Ferguson told the AP (via MSNBC). "She tried to wake him up, he was unresponsive, and she sounded the alarm." After Daniel's death, Anna Nicole decided to name her daughter Dannielynn in his honor. But she would never be the same. Anna Nicole had Daniel when she was 18 and raised him largely on her own.

Losing Daniel crushed her. "Anna and Daniel were inseparable. Daniel was without question the most important person in Anna's life," Howard K. Stern said in court, according to the Times Herald-Record. On February 8, 2007, a day after Dannielynn turned 5 months, Anna Nicole died in an eerily similar way to Daniel. An autopsy report determined the cause of death as an overdose of prescription drugs. At just months old, Dannielynn had no siblings, no mother, and no known father. 

As soon as Anna Nicole Smith announced her pregnancy, the question of the baby's paternity became a big issue. Less than a month after Dannielynn was born, Larry Birkhead filed a paternity suit against Smith. A few days later, a copy of the birth certificate obtained by TMZ showed Howard K. Stern as the father. Soon after, several other men came forward with claims they could be Dannielynn's father. Those included Zsa Zsa Gabor's then-husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt and Smith's bodyguard and aspiring actor Alexander Denk.

Smith's younger half-sister also claimed Smith used J. Howard Marshall's frozen sperm to conceive Dannielynn. "She takes Howard in to have his sperm tested. When the results show that he is still fertile, she has a quantity of his sperm frozen," Donna Hogan told the New York Daily News in 2007. The paternity case moved forward because Stern didn't sign Dannielynn's birth certificate himself, rendering it invalid.

Court proceedings started in February 2007, allowing the different men to share their stories of how and when their relationship with Smith took place. A judge ordered DNA testing, which proved Birkhead was the father in April 2007. Stern announced he wouldn't fight for custody. "We're going to do what we can to make sure that the best interests of Dannielynn are carried out. And I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure he gets sole custody, he said in court (via CNN). 

When Dannielynn was still young, Larry Birkhead moved to his hometown of Louisville to give Anna Nicole Smith's daughter a private life. "I made a conscious decision a long time ago to move to Kentucky," he told Today in 2016. "I do that on purpose because it takes away the chase, it takes away the curiosity, it takes away the false stories." Birkhead decided early on he didn't want Dannielynn to be a child star. 

That didn't remove the interest from showbiz, but it gave him more control. "People call me all the time and say can she be in a movie, can she model?" Birkhead said. "I didn't care about it, so I'd say no she's not interested." Instead, he wanted her to have a normal childhood, with free will to decide her own interests. "She's just a regular kid. She's into technology now and she's into games and these YouTube videos," he said.

Dannielynn also developed a passion for Japanese comics and TV series. As her obsession grew, Larry did his best to keep up with the demand. When she told him she wanted to dress up as a character from the "Avataro Sentai Donbrothers" show, her father had to put his problem-solving skills to the test when he realized finding the costume would be no easy feat. "I had to make it from scratch based on a 3D model," he wrote on Instagram. Anything for your little girl, right?

Kentucky Derby attendees can be on the lookout for Dannielynn and Larry Birkhead every May, as father and daughter are sure to be there. Birkhead has been taking Dannielynn to the horse race event since she learned to walk. He didn't intend to take her the first time, but he's glad that's what ended up happening. "I think the one year the babysitter canceled," he told E! News in May 2024. "And then it became I brought her when she was able to kind of walk and do her own thing down the carpet, and then it became a tradition."

Birkhead later saw that taking Dannielynn to the Kentucky Derby was just meant to be. It was yet another way the two could honor Anna Nicole Smith and keep her legacy alive. After all, that's where Birkhead and Smith met. "I brought her back here for a reason," he said. "Because it was something that was special. And it's become a tradition for us out of me meeting her mom here." But attending the Kentucky Derby in their best matching outfits isn't the only way they keep Smith's memory going.

Birkhead raised Dannielynn on his favorite anecdotes of his ex-girlfriend. He believes it's important to show her a side of her mother that the public never got to see. "Anna should be remembered as this larger-than-life figure that was really a caring, giving person," he said on a "20/20" special in 2021.

Larry Birkhead's plan to raise Dannielynn away from the glitz and glam of Hollywood seems to have worked as she grew up to have little interest in showbiz. Dannielynn's career plans lie on the complete opposite side of the spectrum. "I'm going to double major in forensic science and Japanese studies," she said in the May 2024 E! News interview. "I really have loved forensics ever since I was a kid." Her interest started as an avid watcher of Dateline but grew from there.

And she hopes to combine that with her other passion. "I also love Japan and the culture and the language. So I was like oh, I can do those two things I love," she said. Birkhead and Dannielynn no longer live in Kentucky, but he is confident enough that his daughter's upbringing in Louisville gave her the tools she needs to succeed anywhere. "Life has been really great and quiet by design," he told E! News. "It's given Dannielynn a great foundation, too. She is concentrating on school and has even made the Honor Roll!"

Birkhead couldn't be more proud of Dannielynn's high school accomplishments, particularly during her junior year. "Dannielynn finished 11th grade and maintained honor roll through some challenging times," he captioned a June 2023 Instagram post. In September 2022, Birkhead's mother, who helped him raise Dannielynn, died of lung cancer. "We had [been] taking care of my Mom before she passed away," he explained.