Frances Bean Cobain

Frances Bean Cobain is an American visual artist and model. She is best known as the only child of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and Hole frontwoman Courtney Love, and she controls the publicity rights to her father's name and image.

Cobain was born on August 18, 1992, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. She was named after Frances McKee, the guitarist for the Scottish indie pop duo The Vaselines. Her middle name originated from a sonogram photo in which her father thought she looked like a kidney bean, an image later featured on Nirvana's 1992 single "Lithium." Former R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe and actress Drew Barrymore are her godparents. During her young adulthood, Cobain attended Bard College, where she studied art.

Her early childhood involved significant public attention and legal proceedings. Child welfare services investigated her parents before her birth following published allegations of maternal heroin use, briefly removing two-week-old Cobain from their custody before the investigation was dismissed. Following her father's death in April 1994, Cobain was raised by her mother, aunts, and paternal grandmother in Seattle and Los Angeles. She was temporarily placed in her grandmother's care in 2003 before her mother regained custody in 2005. In December 2009, her paternal grandmother and aunt were appointed temporary co-guardians alongside a temporary restraining order issued against her mother. Upon turning 18 in August 2010, Cobain inherited 37 percent of her father's estate.

Cobain began modeling in August 2006, when she was photographed for Elle UK wearing her father's brown cardigan and pajama pants. In February 2008, she appeared in a Harper's Bazaar spread dressed as Evita, and she modeled for a Hedi Slimane web photo series in 2011. She later appeared alongside Alice Glass in Schön! magazine in 2016 and was announced as the face of Marc Jacobs's Spring/Summer campaign in 2017.

As a visual artist, Cobain debuted a collection of artwork titled Scumfuck under the pseudonym "Fiddle Tim" at the La Luz de Jesus Gallery in July 2010. She participated in the group show 'MiXTAPE' in August 2012 under her real name, creating art inspired by the song "Black" by The Jesus and Mary Chain. In June 2017, she held a joint art exhibition titled "Ghosts For Sale" with artist Lindsey Way at Gallery 30 South in Pasadena.

Cobain has also engaged in media projects and music. At age 13, she selected the title and cover photograph for Nirvana's 2005 rarities album Sliver: The Best of the Box. She interned at Rolling Stone in 2008, performed as a guest vocalist on Evelyn Evelyn's 2010 track "My Space," served as an executive producer on the HBO movie Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, and appeared as a guest judge on RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars in 2019. She previously turned down acting roles in Alice in Wonderland and Twilight.

Cobain was married to musician Isaiah Silva from June 2014 until filing for divorce in 2016, which was finalized in 2017. In October 2023, she married skateboarder Riley Hawk in Los Angeles in a ceremony officiated by her godfather, Michael Stipe. The couple welcomed a son, Ronin Walker Cobain Hawk, in September 2024.