Shannen Doherty Credited Her Tenacity to Her Mother Rosa Before Her Death ArticlePure

Shannen Doherty learned her fighting spirit from her mother, Rosa.

The Beverly Hills 90210 star — who died at age 53 on July 13 after years of living with cancer — opened up to PEOPLE in November 2023 about how her mom, who was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm when Doherty was 8, taught her to be tenacious.

“I come from a woman who was determined,” Doherty said at the time. “She impressed that upon me as a very young child like, ‘You don’t give up. You just have to work hard at it.’ ”

“I think I was always a fighter,” Doherty added. “I was raised that way to be very strong and that I could do anything that I put my mind to.”

As she faced ups and downs in her health, Doherty leaned on her loved ones for support, including Rosa.

“I don’t think that there’s a decision that I make that I don’t take [my mom] into consideration. I love her, and I am so incredibly grateful to her for being an amazing mother,” she told PEOPLE. “I take my brother into consideration and his children, my dog, my animals.”

Doherty has shared several photos with her mother on social media. 

In December 2023, she celebrated Rosa’s 76th birthday, writing, “Happy birthday to the best mom in the world. I love you to the moon and back times infinity. @themamarosa.”

She also posted a photo of her and her mom enjoying the great outdoors, captioning it, “Tennessee girls.”

 The duo even enjoyed a dance class together in 2017. 

“Moving it! Love how my mom has such spirit and keeps up with us even though Neda and I constantly change things midway,” Doherty captioned the clip of them showing off their dance moves.

On an episode of her podcast Let’s Be Clear in April, the Charmed star said that her “priority” was her mother amid her ongoing health struggles.

“Because it’s going to be so hard on her, I want other things to be a lot easier,” she said at the time. “I don’t want her to have a bunch of stuff to deal with. I don’t want her to have four storage units filled with furniture.”

Doherty added that she had begun the process of sorting her belongings, in addition to giving up her dream of having a property in Tennessee.

“It was really hard and really emotional because, to a certain extent, I felt like I was giving up on this dream of building this property out, and putting a house for me and a house for my mom and then extending the barn,” she admitted, but called it “the right thing to do.”

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PEOPLE confirmed on Sunday, July 14, that Doherty died after years of living with cancer.

“It is with a heavy heart that I confirm the passing of actress Shannen Doherty. On Saturday, July 13, she lost her battle with cancer after many years of fighting the disease,” the actress’ longtime publicist, Leslie Sloane, said in a statement.

“The devoted daughter, sister, aunt and friend was surrounded by her loved ones as well as her dog, Bowie. The family asks for their privacy at this time so they can grieve in peace,” Sloane continued.