Tragic Details About Steve Irwin's Daughter, Bindi

Steve Irwin's daughter Bindi Irwin declared during her television debut in January 2007 — four months after the TV personality tragically died — that she would carry on her dad's legacy of wildlife conservation. On "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," she said, "I want to try and be him. I want him to be proud of me." Eighteen years later, Bindi has grown up to be the spitting image of Steve in both appearance and actions and has fulfilled the promise she made at 8 years old. She not only helps her mom, Terri Irwin, and brother Robert Irwin run the Australia Zoo and the nonprofit conservation organization Wildlife Warriors, but she also followed in her dad's footsteps and helps educate young people on wildlife by dabbling in acting with projects like "Bindi: The Jungle Girl" and "Crikey! It's the Irwins" and publishing children's books. "Conservation work is my life. It's not just what I do, it's who I am," Bindi wrote in a heartfelt Facebook post in 2022.

Beyond her work with wildlife, Bindi has built her own happy family. In March 2025, she and her husband Chandler Powell celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary, which, in a sweet coincidence, falls on the same day as their daughter Grace's birthday. Bindi took to Instagram to share several photos from their joint celebration, including one showing a smiling Chandler embracing his wife and daughter. "Thankful every minute for this incredible family of mine. How did I get so lucky?" Bindi captioned the snaps.

However, while Bindi's life has indeed been blessed in many ways, it's also been peppered with a number of devastating losses and difficult trials. From the loss of her beloved father to health issues, here are some tragic details about Steve Irwin's daughter, Bindi.

Bindi Irwin experienced her first and most devastating loss in September 2006 when her father, Steve Irwin, was killed in a stingray attack. At 8 years old, she delivered Steve's eulogy during his televised memorial service, saying, "I had the best daddy in the whole world, and I will miss him every day." Nearly two decades later, Bindi said that grief never really went away, only changed in form. "Time changes your grief. Time changes things and your perspective and everything. But I know firsthand that the grief and sadness and the feelings of loss from losing dad, that feeling is just a part of me. It's like a scar on your heart," Bindi confessed on the "A Life of Greatness" podcast in 2025.

Unlike her younger brother Robert, who was only 2 years old when Steve died, Bindi had much more time with their father. She has plenty of memories of a happy childhood filled with adventures with the late conservationist, including going on fairy hunts, watching animals on their conservation land, and having impromptu food fights. She can also watch the many clips showing Steve gushing about how much he loves her, such as the old interview Bindi shared in 2019 in which her dad confessed to always carrying a photo of her and "bawling [his] eyes out" whenever he thinks of her. However, Bindi admitted on the podcast that despite having all these things to remember him by, one of her fears was that she would someday forget him. Perhaps this was part of the reason why she decided to do something a little more permanent and get tattoos featuring Steve's handwriting and their family's alligator as tributes to her father.

Since Bindi Irwin revealed her endometriosis diagnosis on X, formerly Twitter, in 2023. She has been candid about how painful her experience has been, not only physically but also mentally and emotionally. She underwent surgery that year for the disease that affects the uterus, during which doctors removed the cyst and 37 lesions that had been causing her "insurmountable fatigue, pain, and nausea." It took 10 years before she finally learned the cause of her pain and received treatment because her former doctors had brushed off her concerns. "A doctor told me it was simply something you deal with as a woman [and] I gave up entirely, trying to function through the pain," Bindi wrote, later adding that finally getting "validation for years of pain is indescribable." Her post marked the start of her efforts to help remove the stigma around endometriosis and inspire other women to speak up for their health — but it wasn't the end of Bindi's health problems.

In May 2025, Bindi had to skip the Steve Irwin Gala because she underwent emergency surgery to remove her ruptured appendix. During the procedure, doctors also repaired the hernia she sustained when she gave birth to her daughter and removed 14 new endometriosis lesions. She later thanked those who sent kind messages and once more hinted at her mental and emotional struggles, writing on Instagram: "This disease is crippling and can make you feel incredibly isolated." Three months after her second surgery, she told her followers she was "genuinely healing," but this didn't erase how she was made to feel "ashamed" and "lesser" due to her severe pain. "It's time to have open discussions and make change on a global scale," Bindi wrote.

Sixteen years following her dad Steve Irwin's death, Bindi Irwin suffered another heartbreak when one of their Australia Zoo's longest residents passed away in August 2022. Described as a "family member," the echidna — an egg-laying mammal also known as a spiny anteater — had been under the care of the Irwins since the 1980s, according to a tribute Bindi posted on Instagram. "Saying goodbye to our beautiful family member of 38 years. The sweetest, kindest, most wonderful echidna you ever did meet. Rest In Peace, angel," the zookeeper wrote, alongside photos of her and her family with the small animal. Several of the snaps showed Bindi cuddling the echidna, while one photo appeared to capture her introducing the echidna to her daughter, Grace.

Bindi has made her fondness for echidnas known over the years. In 2021, she and Powell showed off an echidna named Tippy in a video on the Australia Zoo's YouTube channel. "I fell in love with echidnas when I was a teeny tiny little girl, and it was when dad first introduced me to an echidna," she revealed. The video then showed footage of Steve holding a baby echidna wrapped in a blue blanket while a much younger Bindi tried to feel just how sharp its spines are. The echidna in the throwback is too young to be the one that passed away in 2022, but it does prove that the entire Irwin family has had a special connection with the species for decades now.

Coping with a parent's death is difficult enough for adults, and for children like Bindi Irwin, who lost a central figure in her life at a young age, the effect on their mental health can sometimes be even worse. During her 2025 interview on the podcast "A Life of Greatness," Bindi admitted that aside from grief, fear had been a dominant feeling in the aftermath of her dad Steve Irwin's death. "It's scary after you lose the strongest person in your life," she confessed. Due to this, Bindi used to worry every time her mom, Terri Irwin, and younger brother, Robert Irwin, weren't in her line of sight. "It was really hard. After losing dad, I was so worried about losing mom and Robert that I also had a lot of, you know, that separation anxiety where I would get so worried if they would leave a room or something because I just wanted them to be okay," Bindi recalled.

Following Steve's death, Terri stepped up and raised their two young children alone — on top of grieving the loss of her husband and taking on the conservation work he left behind. Describing their mom as her and Robert's rock and guiding light, Bindi couldn't help but express her awe for Terri's strength. "[Our mom] is the reason Robert and I are who we are ... No matter what was happening in the world, she was there for us. And I don't know how she did that when dad passed away, because ... the whole world shifted and landed on her shoulders. And yet, through it all, she was there for me and Robert — and still is to this day," said Bindi. 

Two months after undergoing surgery for endometriosis in 2023, Bindi Irwin went on Instagram Live to answer some fan questions about her health issues. At one point, she admitted that she and her husband Chandler Powell's daughter Grace will likely be their only child. While she emphasized that she has come to terms with this and that she and Powell are thankful to have been blessed with Grace, the conservationist also noted that repeatedly asking questions about having more kids could be akin to rubbing salt into the wound for other families who are in a similar situation. "Society just puts so much pressure on women and families, asking [questions like], 'When are you going to have children?' and if you have one child, 'When is the next child?' These questions can be hurtful because you don't know what's happening behind closed doors. You don't know the heartbreak that someone has gone through. We have to be very careful and very kind when we're talking about people's decisions with their family," Bindi told her followers (via Yahoo).

The television personality made a similar plea a year later in a Q&A she and Powell did for the Australia Zoo's YouTube channel. The couple revealed that they still get asked if they want to have another child every day — a question that Bindi admitted she has "a lot of feelings about." While she clarified that she does "appreciate the kindness and good intent" of those genuinely concerned about her and their family, Bindi once again reminded the public that this question could cause more hurt to people already going through painful health or infertility problems.