Where Did Tina Turner Live Before Her Death? She Hadn't Lived in the U.S. for Decades

Music icon Tina Turner lived so much of her life publicly. She revealed in her 2021 documentary, Tina, that she spent the last phase of her life in private. Tina died at the age of 83 on May 24, 2023.

Tina married her second husband, Erwin Bach, in 2013. He was born in Germany and is an actor and producer with a number of big credits to his name (including the Tina documentary).

Even though Tina was born in Tennessee, it had been years since she lived there herself. She lived all over Europe, and had a couple of big reasons to get out of the States. Where did she live at the time of her death and why did she move away?

Tina died at her home near Zürich, Switzerland, after having lived there for decades. She actually lived all over Europe. In her famous 1997 interview with the late Larry King, she even said that she was living in Europe at that time. She told Larry that she moved there because Erwin (who was her boyfriend at the time) was running a company there. Plus, she said she always wanted to go to Europe, so this may have been both the perfect opportunity and excuse to leave America behind.

In Tina, we see that Tina and Erwin lived in a property in Switzerland called the Chateau Algonquin. The couple moved to the country in 1995, according to The New York Times, and she liked it there because "everything here runs according to the rules." The article also pointed out that she did not speak German (which is one of the national languages of the country). But she always had her husband to translate if necessary and liked that she wasn't expected to say much when she was out.

"I really wanted a castle until I saw how big castles were," Tina said, but the Chateau Algonquin definitely is huge, and she had things that were truly her own. That seems to be a pretty big difference compared to her time with her first husband, Ike Turner. According to the NYT article, Ike screamed at her on one occasion after she had changed the towels in the bathroom.

Tina said that she left America for two good reasons: her music and her man. In the Larry King interview, she said that she left America because of the good things that were available to her abroad. "I have left America because my success was in another country and my boyfriend was in another country." She specified that her album "Private Dancer" was her first big success in England. She said her success in the U.K. was "hugely" different than in America.

In the interview, Tina clarified that she paid U.S. taxes and she had family here. She also said that in the U.S., she's not as big as Madonna. When Larry said she's a "superstar" in America, she quickly came back with, "Not as big as Madonna. I'm as big as Madonna in Europe. I'm as big as, in some places, the Rolling Stones."

Later she said that she lived in England for a few years, but she didn't stay there. She's moved to a few countries over the years, including France and Germany.