Samantha Lee Jacobs, elder daughter of Sire Records co-founder Seymour Stein, died Friday afternoon after a long battle with brain cancer. She was 40.

She had fought a “courageous 21-month-long battle” with the illness, according to her father. She had returned home last week from a treatment center in North Carolina, where she died Friday surrounded by her family, according to her longtime friend, Billboard publisher Tommy Page.

Page, formerly a Sire recording artist, recalled that before Seymour signed him, he insisted that Page audition for his then-teenaged daughters.

“She was one of Seymour’s biggest fans,” Page said. “She idolized her father.”

Samantha and her sister Mandy congratulated Seymour in the issue of Billboard honoring him for receiving the 2012 Billboard Icon Award [1].

Jacobs’ mother Linda, former manager of the Ramones and a successful real-estate agent who was murdered in 2007, also suffered from a brain tumor in the months before her death.

Jacobs is survived by her husband Craig and daughter, Dora, 8 (named after Seymour’s mother), whom she had with ex-husband Rodger Wells.