Hayden Panettiere To Be Remembered in Celebration of Life in Malibu

Hayden Panettiere will be remembered by family, close friends, and former colleagues at a special celebration of life this weekend ... TMZ has learned.

Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ ... the memorial will take place Saturday at a church in Malibu, with about 150 people expected to attend. We're told guests have been informed it's a memorial for Hayden.

We're told her dad, Skip Panettiere, will be on hand, along with a handful of celebrities and Hollywood power players. It's unclear if Hayden's mom, Lesley Vogel, or Hayden's former boyfriend, Brian Hickerson, and his brother, Zach Hickerson, were invited.

As for why Malibu ... sources tell us Hayden loved the ocean and whales, making the coastal setting especially meaningful to her family. We're told it will be a celebration of life in an intimate setting to remember Hayden's legacy and not focus on the struggles she endured.

As TMZ previously reported, Hayden died August 16 after she was found unresponsive inside a Greenville, South Carolina Airbnb. Her cause of death has not been officially confirmed ... but her autopsy found "no signs of trauma" that would have contributed to her death.

TMZ later broke the story ... law enforcement sources believe Hayden died after taking a black-market oxycodone pill laced with fentanyl.

We're told Hayden had a longtime drug dealer in Los Angeles who supplied her with prescription pills ... and investigators believe she took an oxy the morning she died.

Her neighbor later appeared on "TMZ Live" and said a man she suspected was a drug dealer showed up at Hayden's West Hollywood home just days before the South Carolina trip.