The music legend has five adult daughters and one son: Allison, Amy, Sara, Erin, Jordan and Rennie
David Foster is not only a music legend but also a dad to six children.
The composer, songwriter and producer is a father to Allison, Amy, Sara, Erin, Jordan and Rennie — the eldest and youngest of which are 50 years apart in age.
Foster welcomed his youngest child — and first son — with wife Katharine McPhee in 2021. In an interview with PEOPLE in 2023, David expressed that he hoped to be more present with Rennie since he wasn't working as actively as he was while raising his daughters decades prior.
"At this point in my life, it's different again," Foster said. "Not better or worse, just different. I still work, I'm still gone a lot, but maybe the time is a little more precious to me because I got more runway behind me than I have ahead of me now."
Foster admitted that in the past, he struggled to raise his older children as he traveled for work and had to balance splitting time with the kids with his exes.
"I missed a lot because I didn't raise them," David told PEOPLE in July 2020. "The geography was really tough. That was my own doing and a regret that I have, but it was what it was and there was no changing it. So I did the best I could, which was quite imperfect at times. Plus I worked so much. I mean, I've made a pound of music in my life."
The 16-time Grammy winner added, "I used to think, 'Well my daughters aren't pregnant at 14, and they don't do drugs, I did my job.' It's obviously more complicated than that."
While his relationships with some of his children may have been strained at times, he has since mended them and appears closer than ever to his kids.
"We've never been in the business of wanting to appear perfect and pretend that there aren't cracks because that's unrealistic for anybody," Erin told PEOPLE in 2020. "It's really easy to think that someone else's family is perfect or someone else's life is perfect. None of our lives are perfect. Our family's not perfect. But that doesn't mean that it's not great."
Here's everything to know about all six of David Foster's children.
Allison Jones, 53
David welcomed his eldest child, daughter Allison, when he was 20 years old. She was adopted by another family but reconnected with her famous biological father as an adult.
She serves as secretary to the Board, Director, Business & Stakeholder Relations of the David Foster Foundation. Allison also works as an account executive at Commvault, a company that specializes in cloud and data protection.
Allison is married to her husband, with whom she shares two children. She and her family live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Amy S. Foster, 50
Amy S. Foster is David's only daughter with his first wife, musician B.J. Cook. She was born on July 29, 1973, in Canada. Amy's middle initial, "S" stands for "Skylark," which is also the name of one of David's very first bands.
Though she initially eschewed pursuing music, opting to study international business at American University in Washington, D.C., a class Amy took under poet Ann Darr led her to pivot. It worked out well for her, and putting her poems to music led her to a lucrative songwriting career of her own.
Amy wrote her first song, "Home to Stay," at David's direction — and he only gave her 24 hours to do it.
"I think my dad recognized that I probably wasn't going to be an artist but that I had the potential to be a pretty good songwriter," she recalled to Page Six in 2018. "I showed up the next day at Sony Studios where there was, like, a full orchestra. It was Josh Groban's first album, the song was called 'Home to Stay,' and he sang it. And I was like, 'This is literally the best job ever.'"
Still, she added, "When your dad is David Foster, I realized very quickly that people automatically had a lot of ideas about who I was going to be and I needed to learn the craft of songwriting and Los Angeles was not really the place to do it. So I moved to Nashville when I was 29 and spent six or seven years, every day, writing songs and learning how to be a songwriter."
A frequent collaborator of Michael Bublé, Amy co-wrote his hits "Haven't Met You Yet," "Home," "Everything" and "Beautiful Day." She has also worked with artists like Andrea Bocelli and Destiny's Child.
In addition to her songwriting, Amy is also an author. Her debut novel, When Autumn Leaves, was published in 2009. She followed up with Y.A. novels The Rift Trilogy, beginning with The Rift Uprising in 2016.
In 2019, Amy underwent a mastectomy after being diagnosed with breast cancer. In an Instagram post, she urged women to get mammograms and said that she was "fine" because her doctors caught her cancer early.
David commented on the post, "It has been such a ruff roller coaster ride for you this past 3 weeks but I am so proud of how strong you are and you finally have an outcome that is best scenario of the worst situation. Your attitude is incredible and your message is right on point to all women out there — I love you and will always be right beside you on this which you will be looking at in the rear view mirror before too long xoxo."
In addition to her father's public comments of support, Amy has been vocal about her own love for her father. Speaking with PEOPLE in 2018, Amy shared that she was looking forward to his then-upcoming nuptials to McPhee.
"We are all 100 percent supportive of his relationship with Kat," she said. "She is not only super talented, but one of the most genuinely nice human beings. They’re great together. Everyone in the family is really happy."
Amy has two daughters, Mikaela and Eva, from her previous marriage to Simon Gillies. She's currently married to her husband Matthew Freeman, with whom she shares a son named Vaughn.
Sara Foster, 42
Born on Feb. 5, 1981, in Los Angeles, Sara is David's third child and first with his second wife, Rebecca Dyer. She revealed on the Sibling Revelry podcast that she struggled following her parents' divorce, especially seeing David dote on stepsons Brandon and Brody Jenner after he married third wife Linda Thompson while she and Erin resided with Dyer.
"Our dad was raising other children. He wasn't raising us. He was raising Brandon and Brody," she said. "I was, like, dealing with my whole own emotional turmoil, which was watching my father raise other children. That was the thing that kept me up at night."
Sara followed went into modeling before pursuing a career in entertainment. She told PEOPLE that her father instilled the importance of hard work in her thanks to his adage, "I'm rich, you're poor."
"If I knew at 19 while I was living in Paris, going on castings for these like s--- catalogs, that there was a trust fund waiting for me in two years, I would not have been doing that. Absolutely not," she said. "So I appreciate that sort of value system that was put in play early on because I work hard, and I love what we do. I'm so grateful for that work ethic."
Since then, Sara has appeared in films like D.E.B.S. and The Big Bounce and TV shows including Entourage, Crossing Jordan and CSI. She also had a long-term recurring role as Jen Clark in 90210.
She also frequently works with her younger sister, Erin. The two created, executive produced and co-starred in their own mockumentary series, Barely Famous, on VH1 from 2015 to 2016. They also collaborate on their Favorite Daughter clothing line as well as their joint podcast, The World's First Podcast. In 2023, the sisters formed a venture capitalist firm, Oversubscribed Ventures.
Sara is also a mother to two daughters, Valentina and Josephine, whom she shares with her longtime partner, former tennis pro Tommy Haas. In 2020, she told PEOPLE that her daughters are "obsessed" with their grandfather, adding that "he calls us every day."
Erin Foster, 40
Erin is David and Dyer's second daughter, born on Aug. 23, 1982, in Los Angeles. Though her famous father was frequently working and traveling during her childhood and coming of age, she says he didn't let her get away with misbehaving, revealing that when he caught her smoking a cigarette as a young teen, he made her write a report about it.
"I had to give the report to all my teachers," she recalled to PEOPLE. "I had to go to the local doctor's office and learn about how bad it was for me. I've had a couple of drunk cigarettes in my day, but I never became a smoker."
Still, Erin, like her sister Sara, admitted she had some resentment toward David growing up for helping to raise step-siblings Brandon and Brody with Thompson.
"Mine was less resentment toward them, it was more like, we're misunderstood out in the world, because we have this fake, spoiled lifestyle, but we're not even really allowed to be a part of it," Erin recalled. "So we get all the backlash for it, but we don't actually get the benefits. And I think when you're 15, you don't have the maturity to understand that them having a spoiled lifestyle is not going to serve them well. You're just like, 'Why do they have all these things that I don't have and my dad's the one giving it to them?' "
Erin pursued a career in film and TV, acting in episodes of House, Gilmore Girls, American Dreams, CSI and more, as well as films like 2009's Still Waiting.... She also served as a writer on NBC's The New Normal and created, executive produced and co-starred with Sara on Barely Famous.
On New Year's Eve in 2019, Erin tied the knot with businessman Simon Tikhman with David in tow to walk her down the aisle.
"It feels really nice and it feels safe and cozy that I have a husband," she told PEOPLE a month after the wedding. "Like I have a person keeping me safe from the world, you know?”
Erin also created an untitled comedy series for Netflix starring Kristen Bell and Adam Brody. The streamer greenlight the project in 2023, though work on the series has been put on pause due to the current writers' strike.
Jordan Foster, 36
Jordan is David's youngest daughter with Dyer, born in September 1986 in Los Angeles.
Today, Jordan lives in New York City and works as a celebrity stylist. She's worked with clients like Aly Raisman, Kate Upton, Ashley Graham, Lais Ribero, Karolina Kurkova, Cindy Bruna and Lily Aldridge — to name a few.
She's also the style director of Sara and Erin's Favorite Daughter clothing line. Jordan is married to Tom Woodger, with whom she shares son Otto and daughter Juni.
Jordan also participated in the 2020 documentary about her dad's life and career, David Foster: Off the Record, and spoke to PEOPLE about her experience alongside David and her sisters.
She shared that her dad encouraged her sisters "to be really honest" during filming. "I said to you, 'Is there anything you don't want me to touch on?' " she said during her interview, addressing David. "You were like, 'Say anything you want.' "
Rennie Foster, 2
David's youngest child and only son, Rennie, was born on Feb. 22, 2021, in Los Angeles. He shares Rennie with his current wife, McPhee, who later revealed she'd been in labor for a while, and they still hadn't chosen a name for their baby.
"We had a couple names, but my husband was on a text chain with his sisters and one of his sisters suggested an old family name," she said on TODAY With Hoda and Jenna. "It was his great-grandfather's name, his great-uncle's name, so it has a long history in his family. My husband said, 'Hi, Ren Foster,' and so we said, 'That's a good name. It's a strong name.' "
Ahead of Rennie's first birthday, David joked to PEOPLE that Rennie was just as musical as his parents. "He plays Mozart and Bach flawlessly," he joked, before adding, "At 11 months? ... Obviously, we don't see any musical talent yet, but who knows?"
Just a few months later, McPhee shared a video of then-16-month-old Rennie playing with a tiny red drum set — seemingly proving his musical genes.
And while David is a father of six, raising his first and only son is a "little bit different," he told PEOPLE in January 2023.
"I had all daughters until my son and I love all my daughters immeasurably, but having a son is a little bit different," David said. He added that he has learned to be more patient with the young boy, which was something he struggled with more when he was younger and raising his daughters.
He also addressed those who criticized him for having a child in his 70s.
"I think that I can offer one thing to Rennie even though I won't be around when he's 50 or 40 even, or 30 maybe," David explained. "I think I can offer him wisdom from my 72 years on the planet. And maybe that's not a bad trade-off. I hope so."
In August 2023, the Foster family endured tragedy when Rennie's nanny died suddenly. The news came after McPhee shared on Instagram that she would be missing the final two shows of her and David's joint tour in Jakarta, Indonesia, to return home.
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