Full Name: Mariah Carey Profession: Singer-songwriter, record producer, actress, and businesswoman Nationality: American Born: March 27, 1969 Birthplace: Huntington, New York, United States Generation: Generation X Chinese Zodiac: Earth Rooster Zodiac Sign: Aries Age in 2026: 57 Marital Status: Divorced (twice); currently single Children: Two — fraternal twins Monroe Cannon (daughter) and Moroccan Scott Cannon (son), born April 30, 2011, with ex-husband Nick Cannon. Description: Mariah Carey is one of the most celebrated and commercially successful recording artists in the history of popular music, universally nicknamed the "Songbird Supreme" for her extraordinary five-octave vocal range, her signature use of the whistle register, and her breathtaking melismatic vocal style, and equally beloved as the "Queen of Christmas" for her enduring dominance of the holiday music genre; she was born on March 27, 1969, in Huntington, New York, the youngest of three children born to Patricia Hickey, an Irish-American former opera singer and vocal coach, and Alfred Roy Carey, an aeronautical engineer of African-American and Afro-Venezuelan descent, and she grew up in a household marked by racial tension — her mother's family disowned Patricia for marrying a Black man, and neighbors in their Long Island neighborhood poisoned the family dog and set fire to their car — hardships that forged in the young Mariah a fierce sense of independence and creative determination; she began imitating her mother's operatic performances as early as age two or three, began formal vocal training under her mother's tutelage, graduated from Harborfields High School in Greenlawn, New York, in 1987 while moonlighting as a demo singer, and moved to Manhattan where she worked as a waitress, hat-check girl, and cosmetology student by day while co-writing original material and pursuing her music career by night, eventually landing a job as a backup vocalist for freestyle singer Brenda K. Starr; her career-defining break came in December 1988 when she accompanied Starr to a CBS Records party, handed her demo tape to Tommy Mottola, then president of Columbia Records, who was so captivated that he turned his car around after the party to find her, ultimately signing her after a bidding war and investing over one million dollars in the promotion of her debut; her eponymous debut album, released on June 5, 1990, topped the Billboard 200 for eleven consecutive weeks. launched four number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100—"Vision of Love," "Love Takes Time," "Someday," and "I Don't Wanna Cry"—and earned Carey Grammy Awards for Best New Artist and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, making her the toast of the industry at just 21 years old, while Billboard named her the Greatest Pop Star of 1991; her second album, Emotions (1991), produced her fifth consecutive number-one single with its title track, making her the first artist in history to have their first five singles all reach the summit of the Hot 100, and she further silenced doubters about her live abilities with a stunning seven-song MTV Unplugged set in March 1992, from which a cover of the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" became her sixth chart-topper; she went on to release the best-selling album Music Box in 1993—which has sold over 28 million copies worldwide and remains her all-time best-seller—producing the anthemic number-one hits "Dreamlover" and "Hero," and in November 1994 released Merry Christmas, which has sold over 15 million copies and is the best-selling holiday album of all time, its lead single "All I Want for Christmas Is You" going on to become the longest-running number-one single in Billboard Hot 100 history at 22 weeks and the best-selling holiday single by a woman in history with over 16 million copies sold, forever cementing her status as the Queen of Christmas; her 1995 album Daydream sold over 20 million copies worldwide, produced "Fantasy"—the first single by a female artist to debut at number one on the Hot 100—and "One Sweet Day" with Boyz II Men, which spent a then-record 16 consecutive weeks at the summit of the chart, while Forbes named her the top-earning female musician of 1996, collecting an estimated $32 million; she shifted her artistic identity toward hip-hop and R&B with Butterfly (1997), collaborating with Sean Combs, Q-Tip, and Missy Elliott, and continued her chart dominance with Rainbow (1999), featuring collaborations with Jay-Z, Joe, 98 Degrees, Usher, Snoop Dogg, and Missy Elliott, while her greatest hits album #1's (1998) became an unprecedented phenomenon in Japan, selling over one million copies in its opening week—a feat no international artist had achieved before or since. Billboard honored her as Artist of the Decade and she received the World Music Award for Best-Selling Pop Female Artist of the Millennium at the close of the 1990s, after which she signed a then-unprecedented $80 million five-album recording contract with Virgin Records in April 2001; she suffered a highly publicized physical and emotional breakdown in July 2001, was hospitalized in Connecticut for two weeks, and was subsequently diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder — a diagnosis she kept private for nearly seventeen years before bravely opening up in a 2018 People magazine cover story, stating "I was too heavy a burden to carry, and I simply couldn't do that anymore, " and advocating powerfully for mental health awareness; after the commercial failure of Glitter (2001) and Charmbracelet (2002) and the buyout of her Virgin Records contract, she made one of the most celebrated comebacks in pop music history with The Emancipation of Mimi (2005), which became the best-selling album in the United States that year, produced the career-redefining smash "We Belong Together" — which spent fourteen non-consecutive weeks at number one and was later named by Billboard as the Song of the Decade for the 2000s — and earned Carey three Grammy Awards including Best Contemporary R&B Album; she continued her extraordinary run with E=MC² (2008), which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 463,000 copies sold, and whose lead single "Touch My Body" gave her an eighteenth Hot 100 chart-topper, making her the solo artist with the most number-one singles in the history of the chart, surpassing Elvis Presley; Carey has recorded a total of 19 number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 — more than any other solo artist in the chart's history — has spent a record 101 weeks at the top of that chart, and holds the additional records for the most number-one singles by a female songwriter (18) and a female producer (15); beyond music, she co-founded the youth philanthropy initiative Camp Mariah in 1994 in partnership with the Fresh Air Fund, providing free summer camp experiences to underprivileged New York City children; she served as a judge on the twelfth season of American Idol in 2013. She delivered a critically lauded dramatic performance as a welfare caseworker in the Oscar-winning film Precious (2009), directed by Lee Daniels, and appeared in The Butler (2013) and The Lego Batman Movie (2017); she authored the number-one New York Times bestselling memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey in 2020, and she was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2022. Among her honors are five Grammy Awards, a Grammy Global Impact Award, 10 American Music Awards, 19 World Music Awards, 14 Billboard Music Awards, the MTV Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award, the Billboard Icon Award, the BET Ultimate Icon Award, four RIAA Diamond album certifications, and recognition by Rolling Stone as the fifth-greatest singer of all time in 2023; she was married first to music executive Tommy Mottola (June 5, 1993–March 4, 1998), a relationship she later described as controlling and akin to imprisonment, and second to entertainer Nick Cannon (April 30, 2008–2016), with whom she has fraternal twins Monroe and Moroccan, born on their fourth wedding anniversary on April 30, 2011; she is currently single following the end of her seven-year relationship with dancer Bryan Tanaka in December 2023; her 16th studio album, Here for It All, was released in 2025, continuing a recording career that has spanned four decades and produced over 220 million records sold worldwide. Cause of Death: N/A — Living as of 2026