Model and actress Toukie Smith, a leading runway star in the 1970s who later appeared in hit television series including 227 and Miami Vice before becoming a restaurateur, has died at 74.
The multitalented performer, once described as “a cyclone of dizzy charm”, died in a New York City hospital following a “long, courageous battle” with multiple sclerosis, according to a statement from her 31-year-old twins, Airyn and Julian Henry De Niro.
Smith shared her children with actor Robert De Niro, 83. The pair dated on and off between 1988 and 1996.
Their children were conceived through in vitro fertilization and born to a surrogate mother in October 1995. Airyn, an aspiring model who was assigned male at birth, made headlines in 2025 after coming out as a transgender woman with the support of her famous parents.
Born Doris Smith on September 25, 1952, in Philadelphia, she was the daughter of a factory worker and a butcher. Smith said her grandmother gave her the nickname Toukie, which stayed with her throughout her life.
“[The name] came from a children’s record about a little red fire engine with lots of energy. I’ve always had lots of energy,” Smith told the Los Angeles Times in 1990.
Robert De Niro and Toukie Smith, who appeared in magazines including Vogue, Seventeen, Ebony, Cosmopolitan and Redbook, pictured in New York City in 1990
After stepping back from acting, Smith opened the Southern fine-dining restaurant Toukie’s with De Niro in 1994 at 220 West Houston Street in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood
Smith viewed her frequently changing, brightly colored hair as an essential part of her look. “It’s an accessory. I’ve had orange, black, blue, white. Tomorrow it might be purple,” she told the outlet.
And what about the figure that differed from the typical proportions associated with top models at the time?
“I’m round, Honey. I’m not angular,” quipped Smith, whose love of food inspired a three-year catering business called Toukie’s Taste. The company once provided a “feast” for Sean Penn and Madonna’s wedding anniversary in the 1980s.
Bloomingdale’s named Smith Model of the Year in 1978. She went on to work with a who’s who of leading fashion designers, including Versace, Yves St. Laurent, Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, Issey Miyake and Thierry Mugler. She also modeled for her late brother Willi Smith, the pioneering “street couture” designer who died of AIDS at 37 in 1987.
Smith moved into television with a recurring role on the crime drama Miami Vice from 1987 to 1988. She played Angie, the assistant to pop singer Caitlin Davies, portrayed by Sheena Easton, who was the wife of Sonny Crockett, played by Don Johnson.
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She later appeared as building manager Eva Rawley for two seasons of the sitcom 227, starring Marla Gibbs and Jackée Harry, in 1989 and 1990.
Smith celebrated her 66th birthday with family and friends, including two-time Grammy-nominated jazz singer and musician Theo Bleckmann, in 2018
Asked to describe her relationship with two-time Oscar winner De Niro, Smith famously replied: “What’s great about a private life is it’s private”
De Niro pictured with Smith and their twin children, Airyn and Julian, now 31
Her film work included appearances in cult independent movies such as Martin Lawrence’s Talkin’ Dirty After Dark (1991) and I Like It Like That (1994). In 1996, she appeared in the major studio film The Preacher’s Wife alongside Whitney Houston and Denzel Washington.
“Everybody has to get it right,” she told the New York Times in 1992. “I am an actress first. I’m not a sometime model.”
She continued: “I thought modeling was rough with rejection. Huh! Welcome to the real world of acting!”
After gradually stepping away from acting, Smith opened the Southern fine-dining restaurant Toukie’s in 1994 at 220 West Houston Street in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.
“I opened this place because big parties are one thing,” she said after Toukie’s opened. “But now it’s time for us to come together, to connect.”
Model and activist Bethann Hardison, 84, told the New York Times in 2025 how she watched her friend Willi’s younger sister move from Philadelphia to New York City to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1972. Smith went on to establish herself in fashion while also building a community of her own.
Guests in Smith’s community were often welcomed with a kiss that left the imprint of her signature red lipstick. At the restaurant, she was also known to sit down and share meals with delighted diners.
“It was the joy of hosting that drove her,” Hardison said of the celebrity hotspot, which closed in 1998.
