Research on CEOs has been discussed from multiple perspectives over the past 30 years since Hambrick and Mason's 1984 study. In particular, the impact of CEO characteristics on firm performance and strategic change has been one of the most actively researched areas in this field. This paper identifies a limitation in that prior studies have focused exclusively on the CEO's period of tenure, conducting biased research on the impact of CEO characteristics on performance only during their time in office. In other words, previous studies gave little consideration to the situation of the CEO leaving the firm itself and conducted research as if the CEO's influence ends abruptly upon departure. To address this limitation, this paper focused on CEO celebrity (star-ness) among various CEO characteristics and sought to examine how the departure of high-celebrity CEOs affects subsequent firm performance. Based on the resource-based view and human capital theory, and under the assumption that star CEOs are more valuable human resources both substantively and symbolically than average CEOs, the departure of a star CEO can be expected to have a more negative impact on future firm performance compared to the departure of a non-star CEO. While previous studies focused solely on resource acquisition, this study focused on resource loss to contribute to an as-yet undeveloped research area. Additionally, since the study of the impact of star CEO departure on performance is a novel topic attempted by this research, examining the effects across various contexts was deemed meaningful. Environmental factors surrounding the firm were divided into four categories at the industry, firm, and CEO levels (industry growth, industry dynamism, slack resources, and departing CEO tenure) to examine whether the effect of star CEO departure is a general phenomenon regardless of environmental factors or whether its impact varies depending on the environment. This study predicted that the negative impact of star CEO departure would be intensified in resource-scarce environments or in environments with high CEO discretion, where dependence on the CEO is high. Based on CEO turnover cases experienced by KOSPI 200 firms from 2005 to 2012, this study conducted hypothesis testing. The results confirmed that the departure of star CEOs had a negative impact on future firm performance compared to the departure of non-star CEOs. The negative impact of star CEO departure on firm performance was greater in dynamic industries where CEO dependence is relatively high. Furthermore, the negative effect of star CEO departure on firm performance was intensified when the firm had insufficient slack resources and when the departing CEO had a longer tenure. In contrast, the impact of star CEO departure on performance did not vary according to the degree of industry growth. This paper made theoretical contributions by examining the importance of resources under the assumption of resource loss, rather than resource acquisition, which has been extensively discussed. It also demonstrated that the influence of a predecessor CEO can still persist even after CEO turnover. While existing literature focused only on the new CEO, this study showed that the effects of a departed CEO can also exist. In particular, by comparing the impact of the departure of star CEOs—who possess high-value knowledge and resources and hold symbolic significance both internally and externally—with the effect of non-star CEO departures, this study examined the importance of CEO celebrity, representing a key contribution of this research. Another contribution can be found in specifically demonstrating under which conditions the effects of star CEO departure become more negative, thereby concretely showing that the impact of star CEO departure can vary depending on the context.