TikTok star Joules Smith has died at age 6 following a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Joules’ dad, Joe Smith, announced the news of his daughter’s death in an Instagram video posted earlier this month. “Our dancing queen we love you forever 
,” he captioned the clip, revealing that Joules died on December 9.
“As you’ve noticed, we’ve not been on social media for the last couple of weeks. The reason for that is we had to spend every single second with our beautiful princess Joules — and we did just that,” Joe told followers days after Joules’ death. “We didn’t leave that little girl’s side. Unfortunately, on the early hours of Monday morning, our beautiful little dancing queen passed away in between me and [my wife] Elisha in the bed.”
Based in the U.K. with her family, Joules went viral earlier this year after it was announced that she had been diagnosed with inoperable diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), which is a highly aggressive tumor found in the brainstem.
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Joe started posting videos of Joules as she continued to battle the illness over the past few months. Specifically, she posted “Dance for Joules” videos which helped to raise money on a GoFundMe page set up for the family this past June. Nearly £97,000 (over $76,000) has been raised at this time.
The website — created by a family friend —shared that Joe and Elisha took Joules to the doctor “after very short and mild symptoms,” leading them to receive the brain tumor diagnosis.
“Joules has been an absolute inspiration to everyone and I’m so proud to be her dad, as is Elisha her mom,” Joe continued in his Instagram video. “We take so much comfort in knowing she inspired and touched the life of so many people from around the world.”
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He continued, “That sounds insane to say that, but we reached everyone around the world with ‘Dancing for Joules’ and that’s thanks to you guys for sharing these videos and for helping us raise awareness. This is something we promise we’re going to carry on.”
Concluding his video, Joe asked fans to continue dancing for his late daughter.
“I know she’ll still be dancing,” he added. “I just want to take a minute to say thank you so much to every single person who has donated, who has been there on our journey, charity events, everything that’s going on at the moment and the ‘Dancing for Joules.’ If you took the time to dance, thank you so much.”
