Dionne Warwick is a Grammy Award-winning singer, actress, television host, and former United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization and United States Ambassador of Health. Warwick ranks among the 40 biggest hitmakers of the entire rock era (1955-1999), based on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles Charts.

She is one of the most-charted female vocalists of all time, with 56 of her singles making the Billboard Hot 100 between 1962 and 1998, and 80 singles making all Billboard charts combined. Born into a musical family, Warwick began singing gospel music in a church choir at a Baptist church in Newark, New Jersey.

Many of her family members were in the Drinkard Singers, a renowned family gospel group that frequently performed throughout the New York metropolitan area. A cousin of the late Whitney Houston, Warwick notes in her 2011 autobiography, “My Life As I See It,” that she is also a cousin of opera star Leontyne Price.

Warwick, whose musical style has been described as sophisticated, sings in a way inspired and informed by rhythm and blues, gospel, and jazz, but the blend is all her own.