Mariah Carey was born March 27, 1970, on Long Island, New York. Mariah was the third of three children born to Patricia Hickey and Alfred Roy Carey. Patricia and Alfred already had a son, Morgan, and a daughter, Alison. Mariah's heritage is a mix of races. Her mother is Irish and her father African-American and Venezuelan. Her parents divorced when she was just three - and while she stayed in touch with her father for some time afterwards communication between them was far from straightforward. Mariah already had her role model and, even at this tender age, was certain she wanted to be like Mom.

Her unusual name had musical connotations, too: the Oscar-nominated musical "Paint Your Wagon" by Lerner and Loewe featured the song "The Call The Wind Mariah". And fate decreed that another song from that show, "I Was Born Under A Wandrin' Star" by Lee Marvin was at Number 1 (if only in Britain) on the very day she was born.

She'd follow her long-suffering mother round the house, parroting back the tunes she heard from the radio or even the television commercials. She was soaking up influences like a sponge, and healthy doses of her mother's favourite soul singers like Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder omly added to her musical education. Also on the Carey turntable during the early 1970s was Minnie Riperton, a gifted singer who's since succumbed to cancer but whose 1975 hit "Loving You" demonstrated the kind of coloratura vocal effects Mariah would incorporate into her own distinctive style a decade and a half later.

With sister Alison and brother Morgan ten and nine years older than her, and Patricia working nights as a singer, Mariah knew early on what is was like to be home alone. "I'd just do whatever I wanted," she now recalls of these part exciting, part frightening times. "Eat all the icing out of jars by the spoonful, watch whatever I wanted on TV." Yet she recognises it forced her to grow up quickly, depsite those sweet, elfin looks. "I think it made me what I am, in a strange sort of way - because I was independent." School would prove a problem because, as she says, "I found it har to accept rules and regulations because I knew how to look after myself already. I've always been like a grown-up... Mom would say I was six going on 35."

But underneath that supposedly confident exterior lurked a troubled child. She bore the mental scars of the racial prejudice her family had encountered - but it had been Alison, both the oldest and the darkest-skinned of the three children, who found herself with the heaviest burden. "They'd shout racial slurs at her and beat her up," Mariah later recalled. "Then my brother would go in and fight for her, even though he was handicapped. It was tough." Poisoned pets and damaged cars were further problems the Careys would encounter in a decade where mixed marriages were not nearly as common as they are now, nor attitudes as enlightened.

As Mariah has mentioned, her brother had faced a physical handicap in the shape of mild cerebral palsy and epilepsy, but had overcome this considerable blow - along with one leg an inch shorter than the other - to live a relatively normal life. His determination served as a constant inspiration to his younger sister who, until her secret love was revealed, credited him as "the only man in my life". He, in turn, was supportive of her single-minded pursuit of singing stardom.

Indeed, it was his contacts which first saw Mariah's voice committed to recording tape. A Manhattan group with access to studio equipment enlisted her as a backing singer as they cut innumerable demos to hawk round the record companies in a vain search for that all-important big break.

That never came... but the arrangement continued for many months as Mariah continued to show up at school bleary-eyed. No-one, either pupils or teachers, would share her dream, so after a while she didn't even bother explaining. No tears were shed on either side when she graduated.

Mariah would find herself burning the proverbial candle at both ends by taking the subway crosstown from Long Island, having changed out of her school attire, then travelling back as dawn broke to snatch a few fitful hours of sleep before her long-suffering mother shook her awake once more. This had few long-term benefits, except the fact that, when Patricia woke her sleeping beauty daughter, she was greeted by little more than a squeak, so hard had she worked her vocal cords the night before. This distressed Mariah to the extend that she consciously worked to strengthen those vocal muscles, and this helped give her the seven-octave range she enjoys today. "I've always sung to myself as a little girl," she says, "and it's like a friend."

You gotta have friends, so the saying goes - and Mariah found two of the best in the shape of Ben Margulies, seven year her senior, and R&B singer Brenda K. Starr. Margulies was an aspiring session musican who became her regular writing partner, while Starr offered her a place as a backing singer in her band. Both these characters would play their part in a Cinderella story that would leave Mariah on the verge of stardom.

The meeting with Margulies had come in Manhattan when, for her sixteenth birthday, Mariah was treated by her brother to a session in a 24-track studio. "We needed someone to play the keyboards for a song I had written with a guy called Gavin Christopher," she later recalled. "We called someone and he couldn't come, so by accident we stumbled upon Ben. Ben came to the session and he can't really play keyboards very well - he's really more of a drummer - but after that day we kept in touch, and we just sort of clicked as writers."

Next stop was Bedworks, the carpentry factory Ben's father owned in the Big Apple suburb of Chelsea. The musician had used some of the spare space to set up a simple studio where he could record his songs - and Mariah, who was still at high school, soon found homework taking second place to recording. Much to the duo's delight, their very first session yielded a song - and though the title, "Here We Go Round Again", hardly reflected a new start, both thought it an auspicious beginning to their new creative partnership. "It was this real Motown thing," Ben later remembered. "She wrote all the verses out. We were very excited because she sounded incredible. That was the beginning of the collaborating."

Like Mariah, Margulies was pinning all his future hopes on his music. "It kept us going," he admitted. "I didn't have much equipment, but we had a way of making demos sound incredible."

When Mariah graduated from Harborfields High School in 1987, she went off to start her singing career. She moved to New York City to follow her dream, where she shared a tiny apartment with two other girls. She worked as a waitress, a hatcheck girl, a restaurant hostess, and a hair salon assistant in order to have money for food. When she wasn't working, she walked around to every record company in town, trying to get them listen to her demo tape. She ended up as a back-up singer for Brenda K. Starr (known for her Top 10 hit "I Still Believe", later recorded by Mariah herself).

One day in November 1988, Mariah went to a party with Brenda. She tried to give her demo-tape to a record executive, but Tommy Mottola, president of Sony Music, grabbed the tape out of his hand and left the party. On his way home he listened to the tape and after a few songs he returned to the party to find Mariah gone. A few days later Mariah signed a contract with Sony.

Mariah Carey released her eponymous debut album in 1990. It sold more than 12 million worldwide and yielded a record-setting four consecutive #1 singles on Billboard's Top Pop Singles chart: "Vision of Love," "Love Takes Time," "Someday," and "I Don't Wanna Cry." Her 1991 album, "Emotions", generated her fifth consecutive #1 single. The album also earned Mariah two Grammy nominations ("Best Pop Vocal, Female", and "Best Producer") and an American Music Award ("Favorite Female Artist, Soul/R&B").

On March 17, 1992, Mariah performed on MTV Unplugged. That appearance led to an EP which sold more than five millions copies worldwide, a #1 single ("I'll Be There") and a home video which has sold more than a quarter-of-a-million copies worldwide.

In 1993, Mariah released "Music Box", which has sold more than 24 million copies worldwide and generated the #1 singles "Dreamlover" and "Hero", as well as the worldwide Top 10 hit "Without You." In that year, on June 5, 1993, Mariah married her discoverer, Tommy Mottola. The list of guest was impressive: Barbra Streisand, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Bolton, Robert DeNiro, Gloria Estefan, Tony Danza, Michael Baldwin, Ozzy Osbourne, Dick Clark, etc.

Mariah Carey's holiday album, "Merry Christmas", caused a Yuletide flurry of more than eight million copies sold worldwide shortly after it's release in November 1994. Her sixth album, "Daydream", debuted at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart, generated three consecutive #1 singles ("Fantasy," "One Sweet Day," and "Always Be My Baby") and has been certified nine times platinum by the RIAA. With the success of Daydream, Mariah became the first female artist in history to have three studio albums to each sell in excess of eight million copies. The single "One Sweet Day" won a Special Hot 100 Singles Award at the Billboard Awards ceremony.

In 1997 Mariah and Tommy Mottola disclosed that they were going to get a divorce. With her first post-break-up album, 1997's 4 million seller "Butterfly", she shifted toward an edgier hip-hop and R&B sound, stripping away her teen-friendly, dancing-in-a-field-in-a-flannel-shirt image to reveal a sexier, more adult side. "I think Butterfly was a natural evolution for me" she says. About her new look, Mariah said: "The way I looked before, that wasn't me. My appearance was a careful devised picture. No man can keep that up. Now I do what I like to do, sing what I like to sing and I look the way I feel: free and happy. But of course, like always, there are people who have comments on the way I look. They think I look too challenging. Too provocative. But I see it differently. Now I am free and independent. And I want to show that." The album "Butterfly" generated the #1 hits "Honey" and "My All".

In 1998 , at the World Music Awards ceremony, Mariah was honoured with an award for Best Selling R&B Artist and the Legend Award for World's Best Selling Recording Artist of the 1990's. In that year she released the album "#1's", a collection of all her #1 hits. On that album is also her duet with Whitney Houston, "When You Believe", which won the Oscar for Best Original Song. 1999 Marks another step in her career, she will star in a movie. "The Bachelor" is a comedy that stars Chris O'Donnell as a guy who has 24 hours to find a bride so he can collect $100 million. Mariah plays Ilana, an opera diva he once dated and might marry. "It was supposed to be a cameo role, but the part became bigger," Mariah tells. "I get to die onstage. It was a lot of fun." The movie will premier in November 1999. Other projects in the planning are "All That Glitters" and "Double-O-Soul".

On September 30, 1999, the first single, "Heartbreaker", from her new album reached #1 on Billboard's Top Pop Singles chart. This was her 14th #1 single, a feat rivaled only by the Beatles (20) and Elvis Presley (18). Her new album, "Rainbow", was released in most countries at the end of October 1999. In the USA Mariah had her biggest one-week album sales of her entire career. The album debuted at # 2, right behind Rage Against the Machine newest work. Rainbow includes collaborations with artists such as: Da Brat, Missy Elliott, Master P., Jay-Z, Usher, 98 Degrees, Joe, and many more. On the songs "Petals" and "They Can Try (Mariah's Theme)" Mariah puts all her soul into the lyrics. Rainbow is certainly the showcase of this superstar's career.

Mariah was selected as the "Billboard" Artist Of The Decade at "Billboard" Music Awards at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas on December 8, 1999. The Artist of the Decade Award recognized Mariah for her continued dominance of the pop charts in the '90s. Confetti dropped from above as Mariah walked on stage. "I feel like I'm just getting started. I'm so happy to be finally free to be who I am," she said. The awards were determined by the magazine's year-end charts, which are based on a combination of record sales and radio airplay.