▲Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and reigned from 1837-1901. She married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840.

▲Prince Albert died in 1861. Grief-stricken, the monarch fell into a deep depression and never fully recovered. Neither did she remarry. She died in 1901 at the age of 81.

▲John Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953. President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. Jackie withdrew from the public eye and remained a widow for six years.

▲In 1968 she married shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Jackie became a book editor and contributed towards the arts and the preservation of historic architecture. She died in 1994.

▲The civil rights leader married Coretta Scott in 1953. In 1968, King was assassinated. His widow took up the leadership of the struggle for racial equality.

▲Scott King later founded the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and succeeded in making her late husband's birthday a national holiday. She passed away in 2006.

▲Elvis tied the knot with Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas in 1967. The marriage ended in divorce in 1973, but the pair remained on good terms.

▲After Presley's death in 1977, Priscilla pursued a successful acting career. Since 2003 she has been the Ambassador of the Dream Foundation that helps terminally ill adults and their families.

▲John Lennon married Yoko Ono in 1969 as the Beatles split up. Despite a near two-year separation in the mid-1970s, they remained together until Lennon's tragic murder in 1980.

▲Ono has since kept Lennon's name alive by creating the Strawberry Fields memorial in New York, the John Lennon museum in Japan, and the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, among other initiatives.

▲Bogart met Lauren Bacall in 1943 when she was just 19 years old. The couple wed in 1945.

▲They remained together until Bogart's death from cancer in 1957. Later named the 20th greatest female star of classic Hollywood cinema, Bacall received an Academy Honorary Award in 2009. She died in 2014.

▲Cobain took his own life in 1994. Love continued performing, involved herself in art and fashion, and pursued an acting career. She supports victims of sexual abuse, AIDS research, and LGBT youth charities, among other social causes.

▲The co-founder of Apple Inc. married Laurene Powell in 1991. Widely recognized as a pioneer of the microcomputer revolution, Jobs died of cancer in 2011.

▲Laurene is well known for her philanthropy and support for several educational initiatives— she co-founded College Track in the '90s, and in 2015 she launched XQ: The Super School Project.

▲The American theater and film producer married Taylor in 1957, her third of seven husbands! His life was cut short in a 1958 plane crash.

▲Kelly, a plastic surgeon, married McElhone in 1998. In 2008 he died suddenly at age 43.

▲McElhone, a succesful actress, wrote a book about her loss, 'After You: Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father.'

▲"The Crocodile Hunter" married Terri Raines in 1992. A respected conservationist and a popular TV personality, Irwin died in 2006 after a stingray barb pierced his heart.

▲His widow, herself a highly respected naturalist, continues to honor her late husband's work including launching the Australian Wildlife Hospital at Australia Zoo on Sunshine Coast.

▲The music producer married Céline Dion in 1994 after acting as her manager since 1981. In 2016 he succumbed to cancer.

▲

With Angélil's help, she achieved worldwide fame. Presently, Dion has stopped performing after being diagnosed with stiff-person syndrome (SPS). Little is known about the disease, which affects just one or two out of every million people. Its symptoms are painful and debilitating, and there is currently no cure for this condition that sees stiffening in the torso and limbs, along with episodes of severe muscle spasms.

See also: Stiff-person syndrome: the rare disease affecting Céline Dion

▲

His widow enjoyed a hugely successful film career. Her private life was often mired in controversy, but in her later years she was applauded for her HIV/AIDS activism. She died in 2011.

▲

Queen Elizabeth II lost her husband of 74 years, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, on April 9 2021. It's reported that the Queen, who married Prince Philip on November 20, 1947, was by his side as he passed. The Queen died a bit more than a year after her husband, on September 8, 2022.

▲

The retired supermodel and widow of David Bowie made an appearance on 'Today' to talk about her loss in 2023. Bowie passed away after a battle with cancer in 2016 but Iman says it was only in 2020 that she truly confronted her grief. The covid-19 pandemic meant she was trapped in the home she used to share with him, unable to suppress her feelings any longer. Even though six years had passed, Iman said she will never remarry. "People say to me when they talk, ‘Oh I loved your late husband,' and I said, ‘He’s not my late husband, he’s my husband,’ so that’s how I feel about it. This was truly the love of my life, and I just wait until I meet him again."

▲In 1994 the wealthy oil magnate, then aged 89, married 26-year-old model Anna Nicole Smith. The union lasted just 14 months, until his death.

▲

After Marshall's death Smith became embroiled in a lengthy court case over inheritance issues. A regular on the celebrity circuit, Smith died of an accidental drug overdose in 2007.

▲

Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader and activist who survived an attempted assassination in 2020, died in a Russian prison on February 16, 2024. Navalny was a larger-than-life figure in the fight against Russia's corrupt leadership who reached international fame. He was poisoned with the deadly Novichok nerve agent in 2020, an attempt on his life that is widely believed to be related to his role as Putin's most outspoken critic. He was also the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary 'Navalny' in 2022, released the year after he was made a political prisoner in Russia. After spending two years in a high-security prison, his sudden death was reported by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service.

Navalny's death left a gaping absence in the anti-government movement in Russia, but his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, was quick to step up to the challenge. In a video statement released a few days after his death, Navalnaya declared that she intended to carry on her husband's work. "I want to live in a free Russia, I want to build a free Russia,” she said in the powerful nine-minute speech.

▲

Nirvana front man tied the knot with Love in 1992. She had her own band called Hole.

▲

Losing a spouse is heartbreaking, but sometimes grief can also inspire courage. Many widowed women struggle with the mourning process, but some also achieve greatness after loss. Death can also be much more difficult to process and yet easier to overcome with the world grieving alongside you. Such is the case for many of the women on this list.

Browse the following gallery of prominent females who got on with life after losing their husbands.