Her singing voice is sweet and powerful and her songs express her experience of life.
In Trinidad she did not even know about Broadway. She went on to win a Tony as best actress.Īfter “Aida”, Headley became an R&B singer, which was her long-time dream. After singing before the heads of Disney, she got the part of the Nubian princess, the lead female. She was the first Nala.ĭisney had another show in the works, “Aida”. She said yes and never looked back.Īfter only six months on Broadway Disney wanted her to be the female lead in a new Broadway show they were putting together, “The Lion King”. She never got her university degree: the Broadway play “Ragtime” asked her if she wanted to become Audra McDonald’s understudy. She won the title of Miss Indiana Black Expo (1991) and was a star singer at high school and later at Northwestern University near Chicago, where she studied music. When she was 15 she came to America: her father got a position at a church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
When she was 11 she fell in love with the music of Ella Fitzgerald and learned to sing like her. She would sing even when the church was empty, imagining there was an audience. She grew up singing in her parents’ church, the Barataria Church of God. It keeps her grounded and down to earth.Įver since she was a little girl she wanted to be a singer. She is an old-fashioned girl from Trinidad, a pastor’s daughter who takes her Christian faith seriously. Both People and Ebony magazines have put her in their lists of the most beautiful people.Īs beautiful as she is, you will never see her half-naked on the cover of a magazine.
West Indian women with high cheekbones are just the sort of women I go for. She is also an R&B singer of middling success whose best-known songs so far are “He Is” (2003), “I Wish I Wasn’t” (2003) and “In My Mind” (2005).Īccording to this blog she is the ninth most beautiful woman in the world and the fourth most beautiful black woman. In 1998, she sang a duet of Love Will Find a Way with Kenny Lattimore, which is heard during the end credits of The Lion King II: Simba's Pride.Heather Headley (1974- ) is a singer and actress from Trinidad who is best known for appearing in “Aida” on Broadway, for which she won a Tony in 2000. She also starred in a concert version of the musical Dreamgirls alongside Audra McDonald and Lillias White. In 1999, she appeared in the Encores! production of Do Re Mi, with Nathan Lane, Randy Graff, and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Headley's performance was well-received, and she then originated the title role in the Broadway adaptation of Aida, earning the Tony Award for Best Actress in 2000. In 1997, she originated the role of Nala in The Lion King, the Broadway musical. Headley was born in Trinidad, the daughter of Hannah and Eric Headley (Barbadian). In 1989, she moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana in the United States at the age of fifteen with her mother and brother Eric Junior when her father was offered a job as pastor of McKee Street Church of God with headquarters in Anderson, Indiana American Heather Headley is the voice of Fikiri in The Lion Guard.