In tragic news, it looks like the multi-million selling Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera has died after a small plane that she and several others were travelling in crashed in the mountains of Northern Mexico.

Rivera’s brother Gustavo Rivera told CNN news that his sister, who boasted over 15 million record sales, was among six people on board, including her publicist, lawyer, a family friend and two pilots. Rivera’s father had claimed that there were seven people on board, although he did not identify who. Certainly, if the director of Civil Aviation Alejandro Argudin is to be believed, there was little hope for the singer. "The aircraft was destroyed, totally fragmented," he told CNN.

A three-time Latin Grammy Award nominee, Rivera had enjoyed sensational success singing in the Mexican tongue – though she was born in California. The singer released her first album Homenaje A Las Grandes in 2003 and, as well as 12 more albums, she became the first artist to sell out back-to-back nights at the Nokia Theater in Los Angeles. Recently she had been hoping to emulate fellow Spanish-speaking star Shakira and cross over globally to an English-speaking audience. Alongside her singing career was a turbulent personal life which saw her become a single mother aged just 15 years old, going on to become a mother of five. She had also been married three times. Currently she had been serving as a judge on the TV show The Voice Mexico.