In 1970, when she was just 16 years old, Marcia Hines arrived in Australia pregnant.

The now 72-year-old fell pregnant during her first sexual experience and it wasn’t until her third trimester that she realised she was expecting.

“Having Deni made me grow up quickly. I’ve only had one child, and I’m really glad I did it,” she told Stellar in 2017.

Marcia, who came to Australia to perform in the Australian run of the hit musical Hair, didn’t let the pregnancy stop her from chasing her dreams. She was on stage just hours before she gave birth and she returned to the stage just nine days after Deni arrived.

In 2022, she revealed to the Australian Women’s Weekly that she initially had a nanny to look after Deni, and when she later went on tour, she asked her mother, Esme, to take care of Deni in Jamaica.

“Then when we were getting ready to go on tour, and I didn’t think the tour was the right place for a child, nanny or otherwise, I took Deni back to Jamaica,” she told The Weekly.

In 1975, Deni and Esme came to Australia to live with Marcia.

“I won’t say my mother was a saint, but I think some people just are good mothers, and I was really blessed to have a great mother,” she said. “Deni had two parents; her gran and me.”

When Esme passed away in 2003, Marcia fell into deep grief.

“She died in my arms. That was my gift. It wasn’t awful, but it was the beginning of the end. For me to hold her and to know that she had held me, was pretty nice,” the singer has previously shared. “But I don’t think she’s ever left me. When I get confused we have a bit of a chat.”

“Gran was the best. She would sit and talk to anybody. If you had a problem, she would sit there and work it out with you… she would just be that voice of reason. But she did not suffer fools. She used to go to grocery stores and argue with them about the prices,” Deni later told the Grand Gestures podcast.

During a Q&A with Body and Soul, Marcia shared that she felt her role as a parent didn’t change when Deni became an adult.

“There is very little difference because you always worry, no matter what age your ‘baby’ is,” she candidly shared.

But from the sounds of things, Marcia was a protective mother bear during Deni’s teen years.

The What I Did For Love crooner told Body and Soul that after coming home to a guy “climbing out of Deni’s bedroom window,” she “dressed him down” before getting “some really good nails from my toolbox and hammering it shut”.

Deni later followed in her mother’s famous footsteps, forging her own music career.

“I was surprised when Deni followed me into the music industry. We sang at home a lot, but I thought she wanted to be a coroner,” she told AWW. “Music was an integral part of our home, so she decided to do that. She has such a beautiful voice, one of the most unique voices I’ve ever heard.”