Leona Lewis

Leona Louise Lewis is a British singer, songwriter and animal welfare campaigner. She was born and raised in the Islington, London, where she attended the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology. Lewis achieved national recognition when she won the third series of The X Factor in 2006, winning amillion recording contract with Simon Cowells record label, Syco Music. Her winners single, a cover of Kelly Clarksons A Moment Like This, peaked at number one for four weeks on the UK Singles Chart and it broke a world record for having 50,000 digital downloads withinminutes. In February 2007, Lewis signed a fivealbum contract in the United States with Clive Daviss record label, J Records.

Leona Louise Lewis was born in the London Borough of Islington onApril 1985, to her father Aural Josiah Joe Lewis, a youth offending officer and DJ of AfroGuyanese descent, and her mother Maria Lewis, a social worker and former ballet teacher of Welsh, Irish, and Italian descent. Lewis has two brothers an older halfbrother named Bradley and a younger brother named Kyle. As her parents began to realise Lewiss passion for singing, they enrolled her at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, and later to the Italia Conti Academy, the Ravenscourt Theatre School and the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology until they could no longer afford to do so, making cutbacks when necessary in order to help their daughter achieve her dream of being a singer. Lewis wrote her first song at the age ofshe initially trained in opera, before moving into jazz and blues, and eventually into popular and contemporary music.

Source: Wikipedia