My gorgeous actress mum was left looking like a monster by fungus that killed her

A RARE fungal infection left a ‘gorgeous’ actress looking like a ‘monster’ before she died, her daughter said.

Denise DuBarry was 63 when she contracted mucormycosis – also known the black fungus – in March 2019.

Actress Denise DuBarry, 63, was fit and healthy before her death in March 2019 (Photo by David Livingston/Getty Images)

But she looked like a ‘monster’ after contracting a rare fungal infection (Photo by Vivien Killilea/Getty Images for Palm Springs International Film Festival )

People get the infection when coming into contact with a group of moulds called mucormycetes that live in in rotting vegetables and fruit, bread, soils and plants, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Mucormycosis can attack different parts of the body – for example, someone’s lungs or sinuses can be infected if they breathe in the mould spores.

Once inside the body, the fungus can sometimes spread through the bloodstream and affect organs, such as the brain, eyes, spleen and heart. 

People who have health problems or take medicines that lower the body’s ability to fight germs and sickness are more vulnerable to mucormycosis, the CDC noted.

The former actress – who appeared in hit TV shows such as Charlie’s Angels, CHiPs, Days Of Our Lives and The Love Boat – was hospitalised at in California with a sinus infection.

Denise’s daughter, actress Samantha Lockwood, 40, told the Daily Mail that instead of getting better, the actress’s condition grew worse and worse over a couple weeks.

It got to the point where she was airlifted and transferred to a different hospital.

Her family were informed that she’d been infected with mucormycosis and she passed away just a few days later.

Samantha said her mum was was fit and healthy before she fell ill, enjoying yoga and juicing.

But she described how the fungal infection ‘attacked’ Denise, rendering her unrecognisable.

“When I saw her, one of her eyes was completely bugged out of her head,” she recalled.

“She was swollen with edema, she had tubes coming out of her throat, her tongue was swollen out of her face.”

Though her mum was a gorgeous woman, in those last moments she ‘looked like a monster’, Samantha said.

Aside from the severe swelling all over her body, Denise also lost vision in both her eyes, one after the other, as the fungus ate away at her optic nerves.

“Her eyes went almost glassy, one eye at a time, and she went blind,” Samantha remembered.  

Doctors performed surgery on Denise and tried to remove parts of her brain affected by mucormycosis.

Samantha said Denise ‘would have lived like a mushroom’ after the operation if she’d survived.

“She wouldn’t have even been my mom,” she stated.  

People were devastated and blindsided by her mum’s sudden death, Samantha added.

The black fungus previously made headlines in 2021, after increasing numbers of it were reported in Indian patients hospitalised for Covid-19.

And the World Health Organisation last year warned that deadly and treatment resistant fungal infections are on the rise, naming 19 fungal priority pathogens to watch.

Candida auris was one those 19 pathogens – the rare bug has recently spread across US hospitals at an alarming rate and has been found in half its states.

It can cause life-threatening infections when it gets into the bloodstream and is a threat to people with weakened immune systems, especially those who are already sick, the elderly and newborns.

Just last week, a 61-year-old man in India was struck down by the same fungal infection that causes silver leaf disease, which kills trees – the first time a plant fungus has infected a human.

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