For actor Chad Lowe and producer Kim Painter, the past two years have brought two losses almost impossible to compare.
First, the family watched the home where their three daughters had grown up disappear in the devastating Pacific Palisades fire.
Months later, an immeasurably greater tragedy followed.
Their middle daughter, Fiona Hepler Lowe, died on September 29, 2026. She was only 13 years old. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has since ruled her death a suicide. People.com
The family remembered Fiona not through the circumstances of her death, but through the girl she had been: loving, intelligent and creative, with a passion for dance. Chad and Kim said she was adored by her sisters and was the “light of our lives.” Los Angeles Times
Now, RARE PHOTOS of Fiona alongside her parents and sisters preserve a much happier chapter of the Lowe family’s story—and reveal just how much this family had already endured before losing her.
Fiona was the middle of three sisters
Chad Lowe and Kim Painter built their family around three daughters.
Their eldest, Mabel, is 17. Fiona was 13. Their youngest daughter, Nixie, is 10. People.com
Fiona occupied that distinctive place in the middle.
Her parents described her as creative and smart, but one passion repeatedly appears in remembrances of her: dancing.
It was something she loved.
Family photographs show a girl growing from a small child into a teenager surrounded by her sisters. The pictures are ordinary in the best possible sense—birthdays, outings and public appearances that once represented nothing more than another moment in a family’s life.
After her death, those images inevitably carry a different weight.
The family announced devastating news
Chad and Kim confirmed their daughter’s death in a statement released shortly afterward.
They said they were “deeply heartbroken” and described Fiona as deeply loved by her parents and adored by her sisters. They also requested prayers and privacy as their family grieved. The Independent
The loss extended beyond the immediate family.
Fiona’s grandfather, Charles “Chuck” Lowe, later shared his own tribute, posting a photograph of his granddaughter swimming and remembering her affectionately. InStyle
Chad’s older brother, actor Rob Lowe, has also reportedly rallied around his brother and the family following Fiona’s death. EW.com
It is a family closing ranks around parents and sisters facing something no photograph or public statement can adequately convey.
The medical examiner later confirmed what happened
When Fiona’s death was first announced, the family did not publicly disclose a cause.
More information subsequently emerged.
The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner determined that Fiona died by suicide. Records indicate that she was pronounced dead at 1:14 a.m. on September 29 at a hospital. People.com
Those facts answer one public question, but they do not explain everything Fiona experienced or reduce her life to its final hours.
Her family’s own statement focused overwhelmingly on who she was rather than how she died.
That distinction matters enormously, particularly when the person being remembered was only 13.
Just months earlier, the family had lost their home
Fiona’s death followed another profoundly destabilizing event in the Lowe family’s life.
Their Pacific Palisades home was destroyed during the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. People.com
It wasn’t merely a piece of property.
It was the house where Chad and Kim had raised their daughters.
The bedrooms, family belongings and physical backdrop to years of childhood memories were suddenly gone.
After the fire, Chad spoke publicly about watching his daughters confront what remained.
And what impressed him most was their resilience.
Chad had praised his daughters for how they handled the fire
In the aftermath of losing their home, Chad discussed how his daughters were processing what had happened.
Instead of focusing exclusively on possessions, he praised their ability to adapt.
For a parent, watching children cope with such an enormous disruption can be both heartbreaking and astonishing.
A home contains the physical record of childhood.
Photographs.
Clothing.
School projects.
Furniture.
Objects whose financial value may be negligible but whose emotional value cannot be replaced.
Fiona and her sisters had to confront that loss while still very young.
The RARE PHOTOS from before the fire therefore preserve something beyond the family themselves.
They preserve the world around them before it changed.
A family photograph that now feels painfully different
One of the most significant surviving public images of the family came from February 2023.
Chad, Kim and their three daughters attended the premiere of Disney and Marvel’s Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank.
Fiona stood alongside her sisters, Mabel and Nixie.
At the time, it was simply a celebrity family arriving together at an event.
Today, it is believed to have been their final public red-carpet appearance as a family of five. InStyle
Nothing about the photograph suggests what would eventually happen.
That is perhaps what makes it so difficult to look at now.
Everyone is together.
Fiona is there between the people who loved her.
Chad had recently celebrated Fiona becoming a teenager
Fiona turned 13 in November 2025.
Her father celebrated the milestone publicly, sharing his happiness as his middle daughter officially entered her teenage years. The US Sun
Less than a year later, she was gone.
That compressed timeline—the excitement of a 13th birthday followed by a family’s announcement of her death—is especially painful.
Thirteen is supposed to be a beginning.
High school is still ahead.
So are first jobs, driving lessons, graduations and all the small milestones families usually assume will arrive eventually.
For Fiona’s parents and sisters, those assumptions disappeared in a single day.
Chad has spoken movingly about raising daughters
Long before this tragedy, fatherhood had changed Chad Lowe’s perspective.
The actor has spoken publicly about what raising three girls meant to him and how becoming their father altered the way he thought about the world.
He described fatherhood as an extraordinary privilege and discussed becoming more conscious of issues his daughters would encounter as girls growing into women. The Independent
Those comments now have a painful resonance.
Chad wasn’t simply an actor who happened to have children.
Being the father of three girls had become central to how he understood himself.
Fiona grew up in a famous family—but largely outside fame
Chad Lowe has been a recognizable Hollywood actor for decades.
He won an Emmy for his work on Life Goes On and later appeared in shows including ER, Melrose Place and Pretty Little Liars.
His older brother Rob became an even more widely recognized star through projects stretching from The Outsiders and St. Elmo’s Fire to The West Wing and 9-1-1: Lone Star.
But Chad and Kim did not turn their daughters into public personalities.
Fiona occasionally appeared alongside her family at events or in photographs shared by her parents, but she lived primarily as a child rather than a celebrity.
She went to school.
She danced.
She had friends.
She was a sister.
The principal of her middle school informed families about the death of a student and arranged counseling resources for students and staff dealing with the loss. Reports described Fiona as well-liked within her school community. Page Six
Her death therefore rippled through a world far removed from Hollywood.
Her sisters have lost more than a sibling
The family emphasized Fiona’s bond with Mabel and Nixie in its statement.
She was “adored by her sisters.” Los Angeles Times
Those words may be among the most important in everything her parents have said.
Siblings share a particular archive of childhood.
They remember the parents before the children became adults.
They know the family jokes nobody else understands.
They remember vacations, arguments, bedrooms, pets, holidays and ordinary afternoons.
Mabel, Fiona and Nixie had also experienced the destruction of their family home together.
They had already watched a physical piece of their childhood disappear.
Now Mabel and Nixie face growing up without their middle sister.
The photos preserve what the fire could not
That makes family photographs particularly meaningful.
When a home is destroyed, photographs and personal objects are often among the losses families mourn most deeply because they cannot simply be purchased again.
The publicly surviving images of Fiona now carry another layer of importance.
There she is as a little girl.
There she is beside her sisters.
There she is growing older.
There she is beside her parents.
There she is at 10, then 11, then 12.
Those RARE PHOTOS cannot tell us everything about Fiona.
But they can preserve the visible outline of a childhood.
Her grandfather remembered his “sweet Fiona”
Chuck Lowe’s tribute to his granddaughter was simple.
He shared an image of Fiona enjoying herself in a swimming pool and mourned the loss of his “sweet Fiona.” InStyle
There was no attempt to explain something impossible to explain.
Just a grandfather remembering his granddaughter.
Sometimes that simplicity communicates grief better than paragraphs ever could.
Because behind every headline about Chad Lowe’s daughter is an extended family that knew Fiona without the celebrity surname attached.
To them she wasn’t “the daughter of an actor.”
She was Fiona.
Rob Lowe has reportedly stayed close to his brother
Chad and Rob Lowe have shared both a family bond and, at times, a professional one.
The brothers have appeared together onscreen, including on 9-1-1: Lone Star.
Following Fiona’s death, reports said Rob rallied around Chad and Kim as relatives and friends came together to support them. EW.com
There is little anyone can say to a parent who has lost a child.
Often support becomes less about finding the right words and more about simply remaining present.
That appears to be what the extended Lowe family is doing.
Her parents asked for privacy
Public interest surrounding a celebrity family can become intense after a tragedy.
Chad and Kim have made their wishes clear.
They asked for privacy and prayers while grieving. ABC News
Their statement did not attempt to turn Fiona’s death into a spectacle.
Instead, they centered her personality.
Smart.
Creative.
Loving.
A dancer.
A sister.
Their daughter.
The light of their lives.
The family’s message also included a lifeline
Chad and Kim concluded their statement by encouraging anyone struggling with mental health to contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. The Independent
That message has taken on additional significance following confirmation from the medical examiner.
Suicide is rarely explained by one event, one personality trait or one visible sign, and public reporting cannot tell us the full private circumstances surrounding Fiona’s death.
What can be said is that her parents chose, even while grieving, to point other families toward help.
In the United States and its territories, 988 connects callers and texters with crisis support. 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
Two devastating losses, but they are not the same
It would be easy to build a simple narrative connecting the destruction of the Lowe home directly to Fiona’s death.
There is no public evidence establishing such a causal connection, and it would be wrong to make one.
The fire is relevant because it was a major trauma the family publicly experienced months earlier.
But Fiona’s death cannot responsibly be explained through a single previous event without evidence.
Her family’s story is heartbreaking enough without inventing a connection that they themselves have not established.
What we know is that the Lowes endured both events within a relatively short period.
First they lost their home.
Then they lost Fiona.
One loss involved a place filled with memories.
The other involved someone they loved.
There is no comparison.
The family photo has become a record of another life
Look again at those older photographs.
Chad.
Kim.
Mabel.
Fiona.
Nixie.
Five people standing together.
The pictures were never meant to become memorials.
They were birthday posts, red-carpet photographs and family snapshots.
That is precisely why they feel so powerful now.
They show Fiona before anyone knew her name would appear in headlines beside the word “death.”
They show a dancer.
A daughter.
A little sister.
A big sister.
A teenager who had only just begun becoming whoever she might eventually have been.
Remembering Fiona beyond her final day
The medical examiner’s finding is part of Fiona’s story, but it should never become her entire story.
Her parents have already provided a better way to remember her.
Fiona was smart.
She was creative.
She loved dancing.
She was adored by her sisters.
She was deeply loved by her parents.
And she brought enough happiness into their lives that, when faced with the impossible task of describing her after her death, they chose one simple phrase:
She was the light of their lives. People.com
Months earlier, the Lowe family had stood amid the ruins of the place they once called home.
They discovered that a house could disappear while a family remained.
Now they face something infinitely harder.
No rebuilding project can restore what they lost on September 29.
What remains are memories, the people surrounding them—and the RARE PHOTOS capturing Fiona exactly where her family will always remember her: beside the people who loved her most.
For more stories of families facing difficult times, check out the tragic loss of Kentucky Trooper Hayden Phillips and the new security concerns for Prince Harry and Meghan. You might also be interested in learning about the evolving family dynamics with Brad Pitt’s children.
