Death can be a good inciting incidence for novels. For that reason, I think it is more important what comes after the death, than what comes before it.
If this person was important to your MC, make sure the impacts of her death are felt for a LONG time afterwards. The MC should continue to think about that person and the death should change them in some way or push them to do something they normally wouldn’t do.
In real life, people deal with grief by talking about it with others. In my novel, Nonconforming, the two protagonists share stories about a dead character quiet frequently as a way to bond and grieve. It is tempting to write a “brooding protagonist” who is so traumatized by the death of their loved one that they never talk about it, but I think this type of reaction rarely invests an audience. How can we feel what the MC is feeling if he never talks about it with others?
Consider the example of Inigo Montoya from the Princess Bride. He is a perfect example of a brooding MC out for revenge, but we care about his revenge, because he tells us over and over again what he is going to say when he meets the guy you killed his father. We never even meet the father in the context of the story, but we care that he died, because it informs all the decisions Inigo Montoya makes.