Donna Summer's 3 Children: All About Mimi, Brooklyn and Amanda

Legendary singer Donna Summer was the voice of a generation, but to her three girls — Mimi Dohler, Brooklyn Sudano and Amanda Sudano Ramirez — she was always mom.

In 1973, Summer welcomed her eldest daughter, Mimi, with her then-husband Helmuth Sommer. Eight years later, her daughter Brooklyn was born — her first child with husband Bruce Sudan. Summer’s third child and second with Sudan, Amanda, arrived the following year.

Summer died of lung cancer at her home in Florida on May 17, 2012. In a statement, her family said they were “peacefully celebrating her extraordinary life and her continuing legacy.”

Eleven years after her death, the late disco legend was immortalized in an HBO documentary, Love to Love You, Donna Summer — co-directed by her daughter Brooklyn.

“The documentary is a labor of love,” Brooklyn told PEOPLE ahead of the film’s release. “Everything about my mother was really about love, basically. Love and bringing people joy and healing.”

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Now every mother for herself, Summer’s daughters have forged their own paths and continue to carry on the legacy of the “Hot Stuff” singer.

Here’s everything there is to know about Donna Summer’s three children.

Mimi Dohler, 51

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Mimi Dohler was born Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer, to Donna Summer and her first husband, Helmuth Sommer, on February 16, 1973. Donna adopted the Anglicized version of Helmuth’s last name as her stage name before they divorced in 1976.

Of Summer’s three daughters, Dohler is the most intimate. Her marriage to Richard “Rick” Matthew Dohler in 1995 was announced in the Baltimore Sun. Her father and stepfather, Bruce Sudano, walked Mimi down the aisle.

In 2013, Mimi joined her sisters and stepfather on stage to accept an award on behalf of her mother at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.

In the documentary from 2023. I love to love you, Donna Summer, Mimi told how she was sexually abused as a child by someone related to her family’s maid. In an interview with PEOPLE, Mimi talked about her trauma and why she doesn’t “resent” it to her mom.

“I don’t know if she was ever comfortable talking about it. It was probably one of her worst nightmares, if something like that happened to one of her kids,” Mimi said. “So I think it might have been very difficult for her to have to sort of argue with me.”

Today, Dohler is a jewelry designer who sells her products on Etsy.

Brooklyn Sudano, 44

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Summer married Bruce Sudano on July 16, 1980, and their first daughter, Brooklyn Sudano, was born on January 5, 1981.

Brooklyn talked about the origin of her name during an interview with BlackFilm.com in 2007. When asked if her name came from her father’s hometown, Brooklyn replied, “Yeah, I think that had to be part of it, and also that my dad was in the band Brooklyn Dreams. I think the combination of those two, plus my parents being creative types, whether I’m a boy or a girl, that’s going to be my name.”

She grew up performing with her mom during summer vacations and decided to enroll at Vanderbilt University before moving to New York to attend the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute. From there, they sought her out and signed a contract with the Ford Modeling Agency.

In the years that followed, Brooklyn built a successful acting and modeling career before turning to directing and producing. Her film and TV appearances include Taken, My wife and children, Rain and Cruel summer.

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She co-directed the documentary film from 2023 Love to Love You, Donna Summer with Oscar-winning director Roger Ross Williams and PEOPLE called the project “one of the greatest experiences of my life up to this point.”

She continued: “I’m a different person as a result of it. And that I’m able to be on this side of it now and that audiences and people are experiencing it and responding very positively, thankfully, I have a lot of gratitude, because I feel like she would be happy.”

Brooklyn has been married to her husband Mike McGlaflin since 2006 and the couple has one child together.

Amanda Sudano Ramirez, 42

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Summer welcomed her third daughter, Amanda Sudano, on August 11, 1982. Like her older sisters, Amanda also pursued a creative career.

She and her husband, Abner Ramirez, are part of the folk band Johnnyswim. The couple met in 2001, although they didn’t start dating until 2005. They married in 2009 and released their first EP the following year.

“I actually have old tapes that I used to sing on when I was in preschool. My dad had a studio in the house and he would let us come after school and write songs in the studio and have them recorded,” Amanda told Glide Magazine about her childhood in 2014. “So I’ve been writing songs for as long as I can remember and they were pretty terrible, but it was all about, you know, did I do my homework and what did the teacher say at school and did my friend say hi. None of it rhymed, but my parents gave me some pointers as time went on and I ended up doing well.”

Amanda’s band name Johnnyswim “came from an inside joke my family had” because neither she nor her first neighbor Johnny could swim. She explained to the outlet: “When Johnny started swimming, started swimming lessons, they always encouraged him: ‘Swim, Johnny, swim.’ So as soon as he swam, they knew they could make me jump in the pool.”

She continued, “Abner was nice enough when we met that he thought it was actually a cool idea and that’s exactly what we did with the band name. So the moniker continues.”

Amanda and her husband continue to perform together and have their own children: Joaquin, Luna and Paloma.

In 2021, their family was acting Home on the road with Johnnyswimreality show that followed the band on tour, on Chip and Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Network. Johnnyswim’s song “Home” was the theme of the Gaineses’ first show, The upper part of the fixator.

As for following her mother into the music industry, Amanda told CBS News Philadelphia that she “never felt any pressure from my mom. The pressure came the other way.” Amanda explained, “I think she had a lot of ideas for these sounds that she wanted to create and genres that she wanted to dip into, and there was always a ton of resistance to doing that because she celebrated doing one thing… So she always encouraged us to to simply find our voice, to take our time, to just enjoy writing music and discovering who we are.”

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Source: HIS Education