Kurt Cobain remains one of the most fascinating figures in all pop culture history. As the lead singer of Nirvana, he effectively became the father of Grunge music. And he might have further shaped musical history if not for his tragic suicide, one which also shone a spotlight on his very troubled relationship with Courtney Love.
Love has generated so much drama since then that most people don’t even realize that she and Cobain had a child together. However, Frances Bean Cobain has had the kind of wild life that only Kurt Cobain’s daughter could have.
Just how wild did her life really get, though? Keep reading to learn all about the daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love!
Parental drama at a young age
Normally, celebrity children get to grow up a bit before they get involved in their parents’ weird drama. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case with Frances Bean Cobain, who was taken out of her parents’ custody at a very young age.
Why was she taken? Courtney Love used a Vanity Fair interview to tell the entire world that she was using heroin while she was pregnant. This gave welfare officers all the excuse they needed to remove her child from the home.
Eventually, Frances Bean Cobain was given back to her parents’ custody. But it wouldn’t be long before she only had one parent in her life.
Kurt Cobain’s death changes everything
She got returned to her parents’ custody soon enough, but Frances Bean Cobain didn’t get much of a chance to know her famous father. That’s because he took his own life in 1994, and this ended up changing her life in a few very big ways.
Obviously, she had to grieve Kurt’s death, and Frances had to navigate her early years without having a father figure in her life. But Kurt Cobain’s suicide also made his daughter the heiress to his estate. As she got older, Frances Bean Cobain realized what a privileged position this put her in compared to most other people.
Owning publicity rights to her famous father
Frances Bean Cobain didn’t have access to all of Kurt Cobain’s wealth right away. Instead, the bulk of the money came in the form of a trust fund worth a cool $200 million. She couldn’t access that trust fund until she turned 30, which meant she only recently got access to all of this cold, hard cash.
However, she effectively hasn’t had to worry about money for a while now. Back when Courtney Love’s own debts piled up back in 2010, she was forced to sell those rights to Frances in exchange for getting a $2.75 million loan from the trust fund. And from the moment she turned 18, owning those likeness rights has earned Frances $100,000 per month.
She spent her twenties partying
For most of us, getting a free $100,000 a month would be more than enough to live on. Unfortunately, as Frances Bean Cobain got older, she began to struggle with substance abuse. Between drug addiction and having so much cash on hand, she ended up living beyond her means in a big way.
This daughter of Kurt Cobain spent much of her twenties partying so hard that she often spent closer to $200,000 per month. However, she recognized this behavior as dangerous and destructive and sobered up, helping her to protect both her fortune and her life. And she still lives a pretty lavish lifestyle, having recently moved into a $2.3 million beach house in San Diego.
Beefing with her mom on Twitter
We don’t know what the exact relationship between Courtney Love and Frances Bean Cobain was like when the latter was young, but it doesn’t look like it was easy. Love lost custody of her daughter in 2003 and again in 2009 amid her own struggles with substance abuse as well as mental health.
Eventually, Frances took out a restraining order against Love. And when Love took to Twitter to claim that Kurt Cobain’s bandmate Dave Grohl acted in a sexually inappropriate way toward her daughter, Frances denied the claim and argued that her mother should be banned from Twitter altogether.
She almost starred in ‘Twilight’
Perhaps the strangest detail about Frances Bean Cobain is that she was very nearly a movie star. To hear her tell it, she was very nearly cast in the role of Bella Swan in the Twilight movies. She turned it down, though, both because she didn’t want a Hollywood career and because she really hated the Twilight book series.
Still, despite rejecting Hollywood, she has still had more than a few brushes with fame. For example, she has been a close friend of RuPaul for most of her life. And most recently, Frances has been dating Riley Hawk, son of the famous pro skater Tony Hawk, which is a real collision of ‘90s culture that we never saw coming!