Rita Owens, Queen Latifah's beloved mother, passed away on Wednesday, March 21, after a long and tough battle with heart failure, the singer confirmed.
The news comes just a few days after Latifah, whose real name is Dana Elaine Owens, shared a video on Instagram asking her fans to pray for her mother's recovery.
"It is with a heavy heart that I share the news my mother, Rita Owens passed away today," she said on a statement to People. "Anyone that has ever met her knows what a bright light she was on this earth. She was gentle, but strong, sweet, but sassy, worldy but pragmatic, a woman of great faith and certainly the love of my life."
Mama's Girl
The 49-year-old singer/actress has been vocal about her mother's condition in the past few years. She and Rita have been involved with the American Heart Association, an organization that helps fight heart disease and stroke.
For Mother's Day in 2016, Latifah and mom starred in an ad that aims to support the victims of and raise awareness about heart failure.
Heart failure is a condition when the heart cannot pump sufficiently to maintain blood flow. Signs of the disease include shortness of breath, fatigue, and leg swelling.
Rita was diagnosed with the condition back in 2004 after she passed out at work. To avert the effects of the diseases, she revealed in a previous interview that she regularly take medications and eat a diet low in salt and fat but high in natural ingredients such as fruits and vegetables. She also has a defibrillator implanted in her chest to prevent heart attacks.
"It was like a punch to the gut," the Girls Trip star shared when she heard about her mother's diagnosis. "She'd been pretty healthy."
Latifah has served as one of her mother's caregiver in Rita's later years. She revealed that, when not working, she stays in her hometown of New Jersey to take care of her mother.
"As a caregiver — it's just like being a parent, like some things really don't matter," she explained. "All the kind of frivolous things sort of fall to the side because there's something way more important than all that. And when we go through these things together as a family, I realize, these are the important things, these are the important moments."
Owens worked as a high school teacher before she was diagnosed with heart failure. She also briefly dabbled in the show business when she appeared in a few of Latifah's projects, including the television series Living Single (as mom of Latifah's character Khadijah) and the movie The Cookout.
