Dolly Parton tattoos | Daily Mail Online

For all the glitter and glam that Dolly Parton wore, she also carried a quieter kind of self-expression on her skin – as the star had a number of hidden designs on her body.

Before her death at age 80, she had spoken about her ‘tasteful’ tats, explaining that each one had a significant and special meaning. 

On Tuesday, Parton’s nephew, Bryan Seaver, announced her death in a touching tribute, revealing in a video message that she had ‘asked of me years ago before I fully absorbed it as a future reality.’

Seaver hailed his aunt for having ‘lived in the light’ and said she was now ‘in the arms of Jesus’ and the company of her husband, as well as her parents and ‘countless others who have watched her and longed to meet her in the heavens.’

The singer died Tuesday morning after being admitted on Friday to Nashville’s Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center with autoimmune and kidney problems. 

Parton, who is often referred to as the Queen of Country, enjoyed an illustrious music career that spanned an incredible six decades and was arguably best known for her hits Jolene and 9 to 5.

But Parton also kept much of her private life hidden, including her tattoos that decorated her body.

She opened up about the ink during a 2021 interview with W Magazine, explaining that all of the tattoos she had were pastel, not blue or black ink.

‘I have a few little tattoos here and there,’ Parton told the outlet at the time.

‘Most of my tattoos came because I’m very fair and I have a tendency to scar when I get any kind of cut,’ she explained.

‘I’ve had surgeries for different things, and if the scars didn’t heal properly, I just gotta put tattoos to take the sting out. I don’t have the real heavy, dark tattoos. Mine are all pastel. And I have more than one!’

While she didn’t publicly detail the design of every single tattoo she had, Parton did reveal during a 1996 appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno that she had a ‘little angel’ and a ‘little butterfly’ near her shoulder.

‘My guardian angel,’ she said. 

In a 2020 interview with People, she also shared that her tattoos are ‘pretty’ and ‘artful.’ 

‘My tattoos are pretty, they’re artful and they usually started out to cover some scar, not to make a big statement,’ Parton told People.

‘Ribbons and bows and butterflies are the things that I have. I was very sick for a while and I had to wear a feeding tube,’ she explained.

‘It left a little indention in my side and I didn’t like it because I’m so fair that scars turn purple on me.’ 

Parton also shared that she had a beehive tattooed on her skin as well.  

‘I like to make positives out of negatives. I had a little beehive tattooed over it — a little yellow-and-brown beehive with a tiny little bee on top of the hive,’ she said.

‘The mouth of it is that little sinkhole.’

However, she admitted at the time that she didn’t have a tattoo of her husband, Carl Dean, who passed away in March 2025.

Instead, she laughed and told the outlet that he was ‘tattooed on [her] heart.’  

‘Who knows, I may get some more later. I may just have to get covered with tattoos just so everybody could be right!’ she said.

Parton’s death was greeted with a flood of tributes, including from Reba McEntire, Maren Morris, Kacey Musgraves, Sarah Jessica Parker, Pedro Pascal, Khloe Kardashian, Hillary Clinton and more.

The songstress died just over a year after her husband Carl, whom she had been married to for nearly 60 years.