Florence Henderson

Florence Agnes Henderson (February 14, 1934 – November 24, 2016) was an American actress. With a career spanning six decades, she is best known for her starring role as Carol Brady on the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch. Henderson also appeared in film, as well as on stage, and hosted several long-running cooking and variety shows over the years. She appeared as a guest on many scripted and unscripted (talk and reality show) television programs and as a panelist on numerous game shows. She was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars in 2010. Henderson hosted her own talk show, The Florence Henderson Show, and cooking show, Who's Cooking with Florence Henderson, on Retirement Living TV during the years leading up to her death at age 82 on Thanksgiving 2016 from heart failure. Early life Henderson, the youngest of 10 children, was born on February 14, 1934, in Dale, Indiana, a small town in the southwestern part of the state. She was a daughter of Elizabeth (née Elder), a homemaker, and Joseph Henderson, a tobacco sharecropper. During the Great Depression, she was taught to sing at the age of two by her mother, who had a repertoire of 50 songs. By the time she was eight, her family called her "Florency", and by age 12, she was singing at local grocery stores. Henderson graduated from St. Francis Academy in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1951 and shortly thereafter went to New York City, enrolling in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She was an Alumna Initiate of the Alpha Chi chapter of Delta Zeta sorority.