Singer. Born March 30, 1968, in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada. The youngest of 14 children of Adhemar and Therese Dion, she grew up in a close-knit musical family. Her parents formed a singing group, Dion’s Family, which toured Canada when Celine was still an infant. They later opened a piano bar, where the five-year-old Celine would perform to the delight of customers.
At the age of 12, Dion recorded a demo tape of a song she had written with her mother. They sent the tape to the manager and producer Rene Angelil, who handled the career of the popular French singer Ginette Reno. After hearing the tape and inviting Dion to perform for him in person, Angelil signed her immediately under the condition that he would have complete control over her career. He mortgaged his own home to finance her debut album, La Voix du bon Dieu (The Voice of God). The investment paid off, as Dion soon earned popular notice throughout Canada, along with the affectionate nickname “la p’tite Quebeçoise” (the little girl from Quebec). In 1983, Dion became the first Canadian ever to have a gold record in France.

By the age of 18, Dion had recorded nine French albums and won numerous Felix and Juno awards (the Canadian equivalent of the Grammy). In 1988, she won the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin, Ireland, and her performance was broadcast live in countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia, and Japan. After this taste of international acclaim, Dion began looking to the south, and American stardom. She recorded her first English language album, Unison, in 1990. Like all of her English language albums to date, it was a collaboration with the songwriter-arranger-musician David Foster. Driven by the top-five single “Where Does My Heart Beat Now, Unison sold over one million copies worldwide. Dion’s real breakthrough into pop music stardom came in 1992, when she recorded the theme to Disney’s hit animated feature Beauty and the Beast, a duet with Peabo Bryson. The song became a No. 1 smash, winning both a Grammy and an Academy Award. It was featured on her second English album, Celine Dion, which became her first gold record in the U.S. and sold more than 12 million copies internationally. The undeniable success of her self-titled effort, which also included her second No. 1 hit, “If You Asked Me To,” allowed Dion to launch her first headlining tour in the U.S.In 1994, Dion happily merged her personal and professional life when she and Angelil were married. Angelil, 26 years her senior, had divorced his second wife during the 1980s, and he and Dion had begun a romantic relationship shortly after she had turned 19. Engaged in 1991, the couple tied the knot at Montreal’s Notre Dame Basilica, in an elaborate ceremony that was celebrated throughout Canada.
In the first months of 2000, Dion announced that she was taking time off from her career in order to focus on her family. She and Angelil had been trying to have children for years, and eventually decided to use in vitro fertilization to conceive. In May 2000, Dion underwent two small operations at a fertility clinic in New York in order to improve her chances of becoming pregnant. Her efforts were successful, and on January 25, 2001, Dion gave birth to a boy, Rene-Charles. She has revealed in interviews that she has stored another fertilized egg in the fertility clinic and plans someday to give her son a sibling. Angelil, who was diagnosed with skin cancer in 1999, is now in remission.