Ernestine Harvin was the only woman Little Richard ever married. A secretary from Washington, D.C., she met the singer at an evangelical rally in 1957, married him two years later, and divorced him in 1964.
Many online biographies give her death as May 9, 2010. None cite an obituary, a public record, or a news report, and the date falls exactly ten years before Little Richard’s own death in 2020. She was alive long after 2010. During the making of a documentary about him released in 2023, she contacted the filmmakers and asked to take part.
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How Ernestine Harvin met Little Richard
They met in October 1957 at an evangelical rally, during the stretch when Little Richard had quit rock and roll to preach. He had cut a tour short at the height of his fame, enrolled at Oakwood College in Huntsville, Alabama, and started recording gospel instead of hits.
Harvin worked as a secretary in the capital and had no tie to the music business. The two dated through 1958 and married on July 12, 1959, in Santa Barbara, California.
The only marriage Little Richard ever had
In the 1984 authorized biography “The Life and Times of Little Richard,” written by Charles White, Harvin described the early years of the marriage as happy and ordinary.
The couple had no children, and she said she never regretted it. Little Richard’s only child was an adopted son, Danny Jones Penniman, whom he took in during 1984, two decades after the marriage had ended.
Why the marriage ended
The two divorced in 1964, after roughly five years together, and they gave different reasons for it. Harvin said Little Richard’s fame left no room for the private life she wanted. Richard put it on himself, citing his neglect of the marriage along with his sexuality. Neither one blamed the other.
Harvin remarried after the split and went by Ernestine Campbell, the name under which White quotes her in the biography. By her account, she and Richard stayed in touch for years afterward.
Ernestine Harvin in the 2023 Little Richard documentary
By the time director Lisa Cortรฉs started filming “Little Richard: I Am Everything,” the CNN Films documentary that premiered at Sundance in January 2023, the singer had died. Richard Wayne Penniman passed on May 9, 2020, from bone cancer, at 87, so there could be no new interview with him.
Then Harvin got in touch with the production. She wanted to be part of it. Cortรฉs has said the two had stayed friends until the end. The crew recorded an audio interview with her and worked it into the film, which credits her as Ernestine Harvin Penniman.
According to Cortรฉs, she wanted the film to show that Richard’s faith was real to him and that it carried a love for other people. In a review of the documentary, she is described calling him the love of her life, decades after the divorce.
Did Ernestine Harvin really die in 2010?
No, and nothing in the record says she did. The 2010 date comes with no obituary, no death notice, and no reporting, and her work on a film released in 2023 answers the question on its own.
The confirmed record is short:
- She was a secretary in Washington, D.C., not a public figure.
- She married Little Richard on July 12, 1959, and was his only wife.
- The marriage ended in divorce in 1964.
- She remarried and became Ernestine Campbell.
- She took part in the 2023 documentary about her former husband.
They had been divorced for more than fifty years by the time Richard died in 2020. She stayed close to him through all of it, and when the filmmakers set out to explain who he was, she came forward to make sure they got him right.
