Who is Danielle Cohn? Inside the social media star’s controversial rise to fame

Though most influencers and social media celebrities nowadays come with their fair share of drama, there are few people more controversial and troublesome than Danielle Cohn. Since she became a powerful internet presence in 2016, she’s been the subject of much speculation — particularly when it comes to her age, her relationship status and her mom’s parenting decisions.

With that being said, let’s dive in to Cohn’s past and present and take a look at what we know about the social media star.

How did Danielle Cohn become famous?

Danielle Cohn rose to fame in 2016 thanks to her lip-syncing videos on Musical.ly (TikTok’s predecessor). At the time, she was living in Orlando, Fla., with her mother, Jennifer Archambault, and older brother, and simply thought the app was cool.

“I didn’t really like [Musical.ly] in the beginning — it was kind of dumb,” Cohn told Buzzfeed in 2018. “But it wasn’t about making videos. I thought it was cool to lip-synch to the songs, so I started doing it a lot.”

Cohn quickly became one of the most popular users on the app. (Today, she boasts 18.5 million followers on Musical.ly’s successor, TikTok.) By October 2016, she was partnering with brands like Samsung, Six Flags, Target and Live Nation and making bank doing so. According to her interview with BuzzFeed, her average sponsored Musical.ly video back then would earn her $400 to $500.

In March 2017, Cohn’s family moved from Florida to Los Angeles to focus on Cohn’s career full-time. Since then, Cohn has become a full-blown influencer: As of Oct. 8, 2020, she has 4.7 million Instagram followers, 1.82 million YouTube subscribers and 150,000 Twitter followers.

Like any good influencer, Cohn quickly tried her hand at being a singer once she had amassed a big enough following online. However, when she released her debut single “Marilyn Monroe” back in 2017, it was not received well. One top comment on YouTube exclaims, “SHE’S SUCH A BAD SINGER.” Cohn has continued to put out music in the years since, but it’s been equally condemned by anyone with ears.

How old is Danielle Cohn?

That’s a great question. Simply put, nobody really knows for sure how old Danielle Cohn is, and the topic of her true age is the cause of much speculation.

When she was first becoming a household name — or at least a major Musical.ly presence — in 2016, Cohn claimed that she was just 11 years old. That would make her 15 years old today.

However, as the lip-syncing sensation continued to post risque photos and party with influencers, people began to question how any parent could possibly let their young child behave in such a way. People also questioned whether Cohn was actually as old as she said she was, seeing as she looked much younger.

In response to these critiques, both Cohn and her mother started to tell anyone who would listen that she was actually born in 2004, which would make her 16 years old in 2020.

Cohn’s estranged father Dustin, though, contested this claim. In a lengthy and revealing Facebook post, he said that Cohn was actually only 13 years old in 2019 — and posted a seemingly real picture of her birth certificate to prove it.

Danielle Cohn birth certificate
Credit: Facebook/Dustin Cohn

Naturally, Cohn and her mother immediately tried to discredit Dustin’s Facebook post, but the damage was already done. It also didn’t help that during an Instagram Live in August 2020, Cohn seemed to confirm that she was only 14 years and would be turning 19 or 20 years old in “five or six years.”

Oh, and let’s not forget what happened in July 2020. Over the summer, one of Cohn’s mother’s friends leaked an audio file of the influencer talking about having an abortion. Which leads us to our next question…

Was Danielle Cohn ever pregnant?

In July 2020, one of Archambault’s friends leaked audio of a conversation between the influencer and her mom in which her mom says that she “allowed” Cohn to have an abortion.

“I’m getting all kinds of s*** right now about being a horrible mom,” Archambault said in the clip. “It is true: I’m letting you do this at this age, I’m letting you do that. I allowed you to have an abortion, and this is all the s*** that they’re saying on there. I allowed so much that I shouldn’t have allowed and it’s allowed you to be the person you’ve become.”
Archambault and Cohn never denied that the audio was real, nor did they deny that it was true that Cohn had had an abortion. On the contrary, on July 20, Cohn uploaded a 31-minute video to YouTube titled “The Truth About My Abortion,” in which she shared intimate details about the situation leading up to her procedure.

“I figured that it would just be best for me to come clean about it because there’s no need to lie,” she said in the video. “As much as this is really embarrassing for me, and something that I don’t want to talk about, it has come to the point where I have to. And I do have to tell my story.”

In the video, Cohn answers most of the pressing questions on people’s minds, though she never reveals who the father of the baby was. Which leads us to…

Who is Danielle Cohn dating?

In 2017 and 2018, Cohn — who was, according to her dad, only 11 at the time — dated 17-year-old influencer Sebastian Topete. In an interview with BuzzFeed, Archambault claimed that Topete was “a good kid,” and that the couple never spent any time alone unsupervised.

“We don’t have a problem with it,” Archambault said about the relationship. “As long as they’re not doing anything inappropriate — we know they’re not doing anything. They’re never alone.”

Eventually Cohn and Topete broke up, and the Musical.ly star started dating another influencer quite a few years her senior: Mikey Tua. In June 2018, they introduced themselves as a couple to the world with a YouTube video titled “the truth about our relationship… how long we’ve really known each other for” — and after that, they continued to post more and more videos and photos together.

Credit: Instagram/Mikey Tua

Fast-forward to July 2019, and Cohn and Tua found themselves in a rough patch. According to a post on Tua’s Instagram Story, his parents forced him to break up with Cohn after they found out “some sensitive information” about her — and once they made that decision, the then-17-year-old sought to become emancipated.

At the time, Cohn allegedly also spoke out against Tua’s parents, claiming that they are “violent” and “disgusting.”

“Don’t trust anything these parents say because they are violent, they are disgusting, they don’t even deserve to have kids,” Cohn said, according to Distractify. “They treat their kids like they are literally their walking bank and they’re investments.”

From July 2019 to March 2020, Cohn was “single,” though she admitted in several videos that she wasn’t over Tua. Finally, in May 2020, she admitted what most fans knew all along: that she and Tua had actually been on-and-off since 2018, though they tried to be more covert after all the family drama.

Until November 2020, Cohn and Tua were still happily together. (It’s important to note that Tua turned 18 in June, while Cohn was still under 18.) On Dec. 1, though, Cohn made a video that revealed her dating preferences as part of a TikTok trend and in it, implied that she was single. Neither she nor Tua have confirmed anything, but it looks like the couple is no longer together.

If you enjoyed this story about the highest-paid TikTok stars, find out why your TikTok “For You” page is so scarily accurate.

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