Donna Summer

American singer, songwriter and actress who gained prominence during the disco era of the late 1970s, becoming known as the "Queen of Disco", while her music gained a global following. Her influential disco hits include "Love to Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love". She sold over 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the best-selling music artists of all time. She won five Grammy Awards.

She began her career by singing with a number of Boston rock groups. When she tested for a role in the Broadway production of the musical Hair she was offered instead the lead in the Munich production, 1968. She moved on to the Vienna production in 1971 where she met and married an Austrian actor, Helomut Sommer. She starred in Godspell in Germany in 1973 and found enthusiastic fans for her records in Germany. She gave birth to her daughter Mimi that same year.

Summer worked as a sessions singer and also recorded with the labels of Giorgio Moroder, then Neil Bogart, reaching the top of the U.S. charts in 1976. In January 1979, she won the American Music Award, and was confirmed as the Queen of Disco.

On 16 July 1980, she made a second marriage, to musician Bruce Sudano in Los Angeles. Their daughter Brooklyn was born on 5 January 1981, followed by daughter Amanda Grace born on 11 August 1982.

Extremely religious, she became a born-again-Christian in 1979. In 1985 she bought a farm outside of Los Angeles. Extremely extravagant, she fortunately exhibited and sold her art, neo-primitive paintings and lithographs. At a 1990 exhibit in Beverly Hills, she sold 75 pieces for as much as $38,000 each.

She died in Naples, Florida on 17 May 2012 at age 63 from lung cancer.