Leona Louise Lewis, a British singer, songwriter, actor, and activist, was born on April 3, 1985. She attended the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon after being born and reared in the London Borough of Islington. Lewis won the third season of The X Factor in 2006 and a £1 million recording deal with Syco Music, which helped her gain national attention. A version of Kelly Clarkson’s “A Moment Like This,” her winning song, climbed to number one for four weeks on the UK Singles Chart and set a global record by breaking 50,000 digital sales in just 30 minutes. Lewis signed a five-album deal with J Records, the American division of Clive Davis’s record company, in February 2007.
With the release of her first studio album, Spirit (2007), Lewis’s career grew even further. It was given a 10 platinum certification in the UK and went on to become one of the best-selling albums in UK chart history as well as the fourth best-selling album of the 2000s. Spirit is the best-selling first album by a female artist in the twenty-first century, according to the Official Charts Company. The lead track, “Bleeding Love,” was the best-selling single of 2007 and lasted seven weeks at the top of the UK charts. It was the top-selling song in the US in 2008, and Lewis was named Billboard’s Best New Artist the same year. She recorded the song “I See You” for the movie Avatar and released her second studio album, Echo, in 2009.
