Little Girl Who Got Fantasy Princess Party Loses Health Battle

— -- Brielle Kelly had a beautiful smile, a wry sense of humor and a love for all things Disney.

When she was diagnosed with cancer last year after a series of health battles that began when she was just days old, Tina Kelly said she and her husband, Matt, fully expected their strong daughter to pull through.

Indeed, the Pennsylvania girl had been showing signs of improvement, Kelly said.

She went to a dance class last week, and although she was using a walker, Brielle did all the moves. She played outdoors with her sister, Alayna, and a friend, and accompanied her mother to the supermarket.

Once there, Brielle, who loved cooking shows and enjoyed helping her parents to cook, spent more than an hour with her mother picking out groceries for their home.

Family Could Break GoFundMe Record to Save Child With Rare Disorder

Girl Battling Cancer Gets Fantasy Princess Party

But she felt ill last Wednesday night, telling her mother “everything hurt.” She died Thursday at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, Kelly, of Duncannon, Pennsylvania, said.

Brielle was 5.

“We never thought that this was going to be the ending,” Kelly, 38, said in a Tuesday interview with ABC News. “We didn’t have any plans, we didn’t know at all what to do you know when this happened because this wasn’t something that me and my husband thought of. When they told us that she had this lymphoma in her brain and liver, we knew she was going to beat it.”

Brielle's recent scans had been clear, and she was scheduled for more scans in two months, Kelly said, adding that an autopsy had been conducted but results wouldn’t be available for about a month.

The girl had had to have her small bowel removed shortly after she was born, and she had had a small bowel transplant but the organ had to be removed last year when doctors found tumors on it, leaving her dependent upon a feeding tube. Brielle was diagnosed with a B-cell lymphoma in her brain and liver and had received chemotherapy treatments.

The girl's story made headlines last year when a local charity, Jamie’s Dream Team, threw her a fantasy princess-themed party, complete with arrival by horse-drawn carriage.

Jamie Holmes, who founded Jamie’s Dream Team to help the seriously ill after battling her own catastrophic illness, told ABC that she had gotten to know the Kelly family well and was devastated by Brielle’s sudden death.

Holmes met Brielle in October, and in that time, her organization had taken her to meet Abby Lee Miller from the reality TV show “Dance Moms,” in addition to organizing the princess party.

Holmes said her organization had started a drive to collect items that sick children could use during hospitalization. The drive will now held in honor of Brielle, she said.

Holmes also said she’s working to make sure Brielle will be transported by horse-drawn hearse Monday from the funeral home to the cemetery after the funeral.

She wanted to let the girl “go to heaven as a princess ... to give her that royal treatment, you know, because she was a princess, and that is what her mother wants to remember her as,” Holmes said.