The actress, who died at 53 following almost a decade with breast cancer, faced life’s ups and downs with strength and humor

When Shannen Doherty reunited with her Beverly Hills, 90210 castmates for a 90s Con panel in Tampa, Florida in September 2023, she welled up with tears as she received a standing ovation from the audience and her castmates alike. Just three months before, the actress had shared on social media that her stage 4 breast cancer had spread to her brain. Wiping her eyes, she expressed her gratitude. “Thank you so much,” Doherty told the crowd, adding, “I have a fight for my life that I deal with every day.”

Doherty's remarkable journey ended on July 13 when she died at age 53 nearly a decade after she was diagnosed with cancer. She was surrounded by loved ones and her beloved dog Bowie. Tributes poured in, a testament to a woman whose acting career touched generations of viewers and whose cancer advocacy inspired others.

“Shannen was young and so courageous. By sharing her journey, she has helped so many,” former 90210 costar Gabrielle Carteris says.

Her friend and follow cast member Brian Austin Green honored her on social media: “You were a big part of my understanding of love. I’ll miss you more than I know how to process right now. Thank you for the gift of you.”

Noted Jason Priestley: “She was a force of nature.”

Even as “things turned much more difficult in the last couple of weeks, we just kept loving and hoping and supporting and fighting,” says Doherty’s friend and oncologist Dr. Lawrence Piro, who was with her in her final moments.

Still, Doherty never let her work ethic and determination diminish. On June 24 she announced on her podcast Let’s Be Clear that she was beginning a new round of chemotherapy. Just days before her death she recorded five episodes of The House of Halliwell, a Charmed rewatch podcast she was cohosting with former costars Holly Marie Combs, Brian Krause and Drew Fuller.

“Too young, too talented, too loving, too grateful, too early,” Krause said in the July 15 episode. “Shannen was just so motivated and determined to help make this show a success.”

Born in 1971 in Memphis to John Thomas, who worked in a bank, and Rosa, a beauty parlor owner, Doherty learned resilience early on. When Doherty was 8, Rosa was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm with a 10 percent chance of survival and beat the odds. “I come from a woman who was determined,” Doherty told PEOPLE in November 2023. "She impressed that upon me as a very young child."

The pair remained close throughout Doherty's life. "She is my beautiful girl and my heart," Rosa tells PEOPLE.

Doherty's family, including her brother Sean, moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s. A few years later, when Doherty was 11, she landed the part of Jenny Wilder on Little House on the Prairie.

In 1989, she showed off her darker side in Heathers, playing a member of a high school’s popular clique. Then Doherty was cast as rebellious Brenda Walsh on Beverly Hills, 90210, where she and her telegenic costars were catapulted to a stratospheric level of fame.

Being thrust to the forefront of pop culture was surreal for the actress. During a magazine cover shoot with costars Priestley and Luke Perry in 1992, Doherty recalled being awestruck by the show's popularity. “We were all looking at each other like, ‘This is amazing,’” she said in 2008. “To be 18, 19 years old, and having a show blow up almost overnight, was overwhelming.”

As her status was rising, she remained grounded. She spent her first big check from the show helping her father, who was having health issues, pay his medical bills. “He was the example of what every man should strive to be,” she wrote last year in honor of his birthday; he died in 2010 nearly a year after suffering a stroke. “My father was the best man that ever walked this earth.”

Doherty's unabashed frankness became something of a calling card over the years. “I think that growing up on TV in the ‘90s as a woman was very different than it is currently, and I like to say that some of us sort of paved the way,” she said in 2023. “Women are taking such huge strides in the world currently. Being on 90210 and being someone who didn’t necessarily play by the rules, I didn’t placate the men in my business.”

Her 90210 costar Tori Spelling applauded her on Instagram. "She was a rebel in an era when most women didn’t feel comfortable being strong," Spelling wrote. "She always stuck up for me. Always had my back. Always believed in me when I didn’t or couldn’t believe in myself."

Shannen Doherty and Luke Perry Had a 'Special Kind of Love' as Friends Throughout the Years After '90210' Actress Rose McGowan said Doherty “had the heart of a lion” in her social media tribute. “Passion for craft is often mislabeled as trouble. Shannen was passion.”
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lthough she was let go from 90210 after the fourth season, she’d clearly made an impression on mega producer Aaron Spelling, who cast Doherty in another of his TV projects destined for cultural relevance, the WB supernatural drama Charmed. Prue Halliwell, the eldest of three sisters-turned-witches, became another memorable role for Doherty.

The actress worked steadily in the years that followed, popping up in TV movies, starring in the short-lived reality TV show Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty and competing on Dancing with the Stars. In 2019, she appeared with several of the original 90210 cast members on the cheeky, short-lived revival BH90210.

Doherty did not have any children, though she said she “always wanted” to be a mom. She was married three times and agreed to finalize her divorce from photographer Kurt Iswarienko one day before she died. She often looked back on her romantic relationships with humor.

“Listen, Elizabeth Taylor still has me beat as far as husbands and divorces, so I’m good. I’m not there yet, so there’s no reason to be negative about it,” she told PEOPLE in 2023. “S--- happens.”

Decades of ups and downs in Hollywood had made Doherty a private person. But following her breast cancer diagnosis in 2015, she had an epiphany. “When I got cancer the first time, it was this really beautiful thing, because it finally stripped all of that away,” she said in 2020. “Those walls were, like, eliminated. That sort of childhood resentment — 19 to me is childhood — was gone.”

She revealed she was in remission in April 2017, but when she announced in 2020 that the cancer had returned, Doherty had a steadfast determination to live life to the fullest. She continued to work, raised money for breast cancer awareness, supported animal rights charities and chose to spend more time with those closest to her, including her mom, actresses Sarah Michelle Gellar and Roma Downey and real estate agent Chris Cortazzo.

"How do you possibly find the right words to sum up 30 years of friendship? I keep reminding myself it only hurts this much because, there was so much love," Gellar, 47, wrote on Instagram before urging followers to honor her friend by supporting animal rights charities, a cause Doherty cared about deeply.

In 2023 Doherty debuted her Let’s Be Clear podcast, where she was open about her career, the great loves of her life and living with cancer.

“I’m not done,” Doherty said last year. “I’m not done with living. I’m not done with loving. I’m not done with creating. I’m not done with hopefully changing things for the better.”

It was crucial for the actress to prove that people with cancer could still live full lives and make meaningful contributions. “People just assume that it means you can’t walk, you can’t eat, you can’t work. They put you out to pasture at a very early age — ‘You’re done, you’re retired,’ and we’re not,” she told PEOPLE in 2023. “We’re vibrant, and we have such a different outlook on life. We are people who want to work, embrace life and keep moving forward.”

Shannen Doherty Said Working, Filming 3 Podcast Episodes a Day Left 'No Room for Depression' Before Her Death Her experience, she said, allowed her to peer into life’s greater depths. “You really have to dig deep to face cancer, and in that you find all the stuff that you had hidden away,” she said in 2021. “And it’s beautiful things that you find. You find the vulnerability, you find your trust in people again, you find forgiveness.”

Doherty often expressed gratitude — “I wake up and go to bed thanking God, praying for the things that matter to me without asking for too much” — even as her cancer thwarted aggressive treatments like radiation therapy.

Still, “I’m not afraid of death,” she told PEOPLE in November 2023 when she revealed her cancer had spread to her bones. “I know where I’m going — and I know the people that I’m going to see."