Harry Belafonte's Family: Remembering the Legend's Life With His Spouses and Kids

Harry Belafonte was married three times and welcomed four children before his death on April 25, 2023

Iconic singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte died on April 25, 2023, at 96 years old, leaving behind his wife of 15 years and four adult children.

According to reps for the late musician, Belafonte died of congestive heart failure in his New York home. His third wife, Pamela Frank, was "by his side."

Known for his musical talents and humanitarian efforts, the Jamaican-American singer married three times during his life. He wed for the first time in 1948, when he and educator Marguerite Belafonte tied the knot. They welcomed their first daughter together, Adrienne, soon thereafter, but Marguerite was pregnant with their second child, Shari, when their marriage began to fall apart. Eventually, the two went their separate ways, and Belafonte married his second wife Julie Robinson.

Belafonte and Robinson were married for nearly 50 years and welcomed two children, Gina and David, before they divorced in 2004. Four years later, Belafonte married photographer Pamela Frank.

From meeting his first wife in 1944 to becoming a father, here is a look back at Harry Belafonte's marriages and family life over the years.

Marguerite Belafonte

Belafonte met his future first wife Marguerite (née Byrd) in 1944 while he was serving in the Navy in Virginia.

A 1996 profile of the singer in The New Yorker described the former pair as an "odd couple." Per the outlet, Belafonte and Marguerite came from different social class backgrounds, and as a sorority sister from a middle-class family, it was difficult for Marguerite to understand her husband. She once said, "Our courtship was one long argument over racial issues."

They wed on June 18, 1948, and had two children together, daughters Adrienne and Shari Belafonte. However, they separated while Marguerite was pregnant with Shari in 1954.

The pair's marriage was already in trouble when Belafonte filmed the 1954 movie Carmen Jones, and Belafonte met the woman he would go on to marry next, dancer Julie Robinson, while on set. Marguerite found love letters that Robinson wrote to her husband soon after she gave birth to Shari, and their divorce quickly followed.

In 2022, Shari told PEOPLE that her father was not especially active in her life following her parent's separation. As she said, "He was not the warm and fuzzy father figure depicted in early TV shows. But then, who really was? My parents separated when my mother was pregnant with me, so I did not grow up with him in our household," she recalled. "My grandmother and mother raised me, and they would be talking about 'Harry' — 'Harry's coming over to pick up Shari at whatever time.' So 90 percent of the time, I refer to him as 'Harry.' "

Belafonte's oldest child, Adrienne, also weighed in on her parents' marriage, saying, "Mom had the drive and focus of many Black contemporaries. She came from a family that was striving to be in the upper echelon of Black society, which then moves you into the middle echelon of White society. For Dad, it was about changing all of society."

Marguerite had her own career before, during and after her marriage to Belafonte. She acted for a brief period of time, and even had a role as a hostess in the 1959 film Night of the Quarter Moon. Marguerite also studied at the Sorbonne and the University of Heidelberg, and later told The New Yorker that she and Belafonte were living lives at odds with one another. She said, "I just found the show-biz world to be shallow, and false. And, more and more, that was his whole life."

Marguerite died in 1998 at the age of 74.

Julie Robinson

Shortly after his divorce from Marguerite, Belafonte wed his costar and second wife, Julie Robinson, in 1957. The pair also welcomed two children together: Gina and David.

Robinson and Belafonte met when they were both cast in the 1954 film Carmen Jones. Robinson was dating Marlon Brando at the time, but she soon began writing love letters to Belafonte that were discovered by his first wife, Marguerite.

Belafonte attempted to keep his divorce from Marguerite and marriage to Robinson private while filming his 1957 movie Island in the Sun, but the news eventually became public.

As the years went on, Marguerite and Robinson became "good friends," according to The New Yorker. The outlet added in its 1996 profile, "The children of Belafonte's second marriage, David and Gina, are genuinely close to those of his first."

Belafonte and Robinson divorced in 2004 after 47 years of marriage, when the humanitarian was 77 years old. In his 2011 memoir My Song: A Memoir, he said of his second marriage, "I felt angry and trapped, but then I'd always felt that way. Trapped by my mother, by poverty ... by the responsibility I felt for the global poor."

Pamela Frank

In 2008, Belafonte married his third wife, photographer Pamela Frank. She has two children, Sarah and Lindsey, from a previous relationship.

Though the two kept details of their relationship fairly private over the years, Frank did accompany Belafonte to several events throughout the marriage, including the NAACP Image Awards in 2013 and the opening night of Michael Moore on Broadway in 2017.

She was also there when Belafonte received the National Order of the Legion of Honour from the French government in 2021.

On April 25, 2023, reps for Belafonte confirmed that the singer had died at his New York home with Frank by his side.

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