Sources say Smith was rushed to the hospital after being found unresponsive in her hotel room at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla., where she was staying with her companion, Howard K. Stern.

Her 5-month-old daughter, Dannielynn Hope, was not with them, sources say, but is being cared for in the Bahamas by the mother of Shane Gibson, a high-ranking Bahamian official who is a close friend of Smith’s.

Before learning of Smith’s death, Rale told PEOPLE, “She hasn’t been well the past few days, she’s had cold and flu symptoms.”

According to Access Hollywood, she was rushed to Memorial Regional Hospital shortly after 2 p.m. ET on Thursday.

On Wednesday, a Los Angeles judge had ordered Smith, 39, and her 5-month-old daughter Dannielynn Hope to submit to a DNA test by Feb. 21. The test is tied to a paternity lawsuit filed by photographer Larry Birkhead, who claims he is Dannielynn’s father. Smith’s companion, Howard K. Stern, is listed as the infant’s father on her birth certificate.

Anna Nicole had been rushed to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, shortly after 2 p.m. EST after collapsing at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood.

Local police were reportedly forced to shut down the streets to expedite rushing her to the hospital.

According to reports, fire crews and emergency personnel performed CPR on Smith and put a tube down her throat.

According to a witness on the scene, when rescue workers arrived, Anna Nicole was unresponsive.

Her bodyguard was also reportedly visibly shaken at the scene.

Smith had been a tabloid staple even before she became Playboy’s playmate of the year in 1993. Readers were fascinated by her bombshell good looks, her marriage to an elderly billionaire and subsequent court fight over his estate, her weight fluctuations, and last year, the sudden death of her 20-year-old son, Daniel Smith.

A former topless dancer, she made her name squeezing into Guess jeans. She resembled the late actress Marilyn Monroe, a similarity played up in her Guess magazine ads, billboards and department store displays.

In 1994, she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, the head of oil-based Koch Industries, which is part of a family fortune worth at least $400 million.

He died in 1995, setting off a feud with her former stepson, E. Pierce Marshall, over whether she had a right to his estate.

A federal court in California awarded Smith $474 million in a complicated legal twist that began after she declared bankruptcy. That was later overturned.

But in May, the U.S. Supreme Court revived her case, ruling that she deserved another day in court in her battle with her former stepson.

The justices said only that federal courts in California could deal with her case despite a Texas state court ruling that Marshall was the sole heir to the estate.

Then, the stepson died June 20 at age 67. But the family said the court fight would continue.

Daniel Smith died Sept. 10 in his mother’s hospital room in the Bahamas, just days after she gave birth to a daughter.

An American medical examiner hired by the family, Cyril Wecht, said he had methadone and two antidepressants in his system when he died. Low levels of the three drugs interacted to cause an accidental death, Wecht said.

Meanwhile, the paternity of her now 5-month-old daughter remained a matter of dispute.

She was born Vickie Lynn Hogan on Nov. 28, 1967, in Houston, one of six children of Donald Eugene and Virgie Hart Hogan.

She married Bill Smith in 1985, giving birth to Daniel before divorcing two years later.