Model and actress Toukie Smith, a leading runway figure of the 1970s who later appeared on television hits including 227 and Miami Vice before opening a restaurant, has died at 74.
Smith, once described as “a cyclone of dizzy charm”, died in a New York City hospital following a “long, courageous battle” with multiple sclerosis, her twin children, Airyn and Julian Henry De Niro, 31, said in a statement.
She had her children with actor Robert De Niro, 83, whom she dated intermittently between 1988 and 1996.
The twins 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, Smith was the daughter of a factory worker and a butcher. She 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, a former Vogue, Seventeen, Ebony, Cosmopolitan and Redbook model, 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
She viewed her frequently changing, brightly colored hair as another fashion statement. “It’s an accessory. I’ve had orange, black, blue, white. Tomorrow it might be purple,” she said.
Smith also embraced a figure that stood apart from the traditionally angular proportions favored in top modeling.
“I’m round, Honey. I’m not angular,” she once joked. Her love of food eventually inspired a three-year catering venture, Toukie’s Taste, which supplied a “feast” for Sean Penn and Madonna’s wedding anniversary in the 1980s.
Bloomingdale’s named Smith Model of the Year in 1978. During her fashion career, she worked with an extraordinary roster of designers, including Versace, Yves St. Laurent, Chanel, Hubert de Givenchy, Issey Miyake, Thierry Mugler and her late brother Willi Smith, the influential “street couture” designer who died of AIDS at 37 in 1987.
Smith moved into television in 1987 and 1988 with a recurring role on the crime drama Miami Vice. She played Angie, the assistant to pop singer Caitlin Davies, portrayed by Sheena Easton, who was married to Don Johnson’s character, Sonny Crockett.
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She later spent two seasons on the sitcom 227, playing building manager Eva Rawley opposite Marla Gibbs and Jackée Harry in 1989 and 1990.
Smith celebrated her 66th birthday with family and friends in 2018, including two-time Grammy-nominated jazz singer and musician Theo Bleckmann
Asked to describe her relationship with two-time Oscar winner De Niro, Smith once replied: “What’s great about a private life is it’s private”
De Niro pictured with Smith and their twins, Airyn and Julian, who are 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 semi-retiring from acting, Smith turned her attention to hospitality, opening 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 the restaurant launched, “but now it’s time for us to come together, to connect.”
Model and activist Bethann Hardison, 84, recalled to the New York Times in 2025 how she watched her friend Willi’s younger sister move from Philadelphia to New York in 1972 to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology. Smith went on to make her mark in fashion while building a community of her own.
Friends and members of that community were often welcomed with a kiss that left Smith’s trademark red lipstick on their cheeks. At Toukie’s, she was also known to sit down and share meals with delighted customers.
“It was the joy of hosting that drove her,” Hardison told the outlet of the celebrity restaurant, which closed in 1998.