Coco Lee

Asian pop diva CoCo Lee was born January 17, 1974 in Hong Kong; a decade later the family relocated to San Francisco, and she subsequently studied biochemistry at the University of California at Irivne. After winning the Miss Chinese-America Pageant in 1991, two years later Lee returned to Hong Kong long enough to take second prize in the New Talent Singing Contest (the Asian equivalent of Star Search, resulting in a recording contract with Capital Artists; her Mandarin-language debut I Am Still Your Lover appeared in 1994, with the follow-up Promise Me trailing just months later. A series of releases including the English-language Brave Enough to Love, Yesterday's Passion (her Sony label debut) and Sincere launched Lee to the top of the Asian pop charts, and in all she issued a dozen albums prior to making her stateside debut in early 2000 with Just No Other Way. Despite the lack of a real commercial breakthrough in America, Lee continued to top Asian charts with 2005's Exposed and the following year's Just Want You. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi