Lionel Richie Age, Girlfriend, Wife, Children, Family, Biography

Some Lesser Known Facts About Lionel Richie

• His great-grandfather, J. Louis Brown, was the son of the federal judge and slaveowner Morgan Welles Brown.

• His great-grandfather was a national leader of an early Black American fraternal group.

• Richie grew up on the Tuskegee Institute campus.

• Booker T. Washington, an American educator and author, gave his grandparents his family home as a gift.

• When he was six years old, he experienced racism while travelling to Montgomery, Ala., with his father.

• He was a top tennis player during his school days at Joliet Township High School.
  

  Lionel Richie while playing tennis during his college days

• After completing his school education, he got a tennis scholarship and continued his studies at Tuskegee Institute. There, he joined the Marching Crimson Pipers, a marching band.

• He once thought about becoming a priest in the Episcopal Church, where he was baptized.

• After that, he decided that he was not suited for this profession and decided to focus on music. During this time, he could not read or write music.

• He is a member of Kappa Kappa Psi, an honour fraternity for band members.

• He is also an active life member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.
  

  Lionel Richie during his college days

• While studying at Tuskegee University, Richie formed several R&B groups in the mid-1960s.

• In 1968, he joined the musical band Commodores as a singer and saxophonist.

• That same year, the Commodores signed a contract with Atlantic Records for one record.

• They later moved to Motown Records and started as an opening act for The Jackson 5.

• After that, the Commodores became a known music group, and their early albums featured upbeat, funky songs like Machine Gun and Brick House.

• Richie then started writing and singing softer, romantic ballads such as Easy, Three Times a Lady, Still, and Sail On.

• In 1974, his song Happy People earned a huge success, which he co-wrote with Jeffrey Bowen and Donald Baldwin and was recorded by The Temptations, who made it a No. 1 R&B hit.
  

  The poster of the song Happy People (1974)

• After marrying Brenda Harvey, he took Nicole Camille Escovedo (now Nicole Richie), the two-year-old daughter of a band member.

• Nicole is also the niece of drummer Sheila E.

• The couple raised Nicole and legally adopted her when she was nine years old.

• In the late 1970s, Richie started writing songs for other artists.

• He wrote the song Lady for Kenny Rogers, which became a hit in 1980.

• The next year, he produced the music album Share Your Love for Rogers.

• In 1981, Richie sang the song Endless Love with Diana Ross for the film of the same name. The song became a huge hit worldwide and one of Motown’s biggest successes.

• In 1982, Richie released his first solo album, Lionel Richie, which included three hit songs Truly, You Are, and My Love. Soon after its release, the album reached No. 3 on the charts and sold over 4 million copies.
  

  Lionel Richie on the poster of his first solo album, Lionel Richie

• In 1983, his next album, Can’t Slow Down, won two Grammy Awards.

• In 1984, Richie performed the song All Night Long at the closing ceremony of the Los Angeles Olympics.

• The same year, he released a romantic song Hello, which was in the Top 10 songs of the year.

• In 1984, some of his other songs such as Stuck on You, Running with the Night, and Penny Lover were also included in the Top 10 list.

• He then wrote and produced the song Missing You for the singer Diana Ross, which reached No. 10 on the pop charts and No. 1 on the R&B charts.

• In 1985, he wrote and sang the song Say You, Say Me for the film White Nights. It won an Academy Award and was No. 1 on the U.S. charts for four weeks.

• It became the second biggest song of 1986 after the song That’s What Friends Are For by Dionne and Friends.

• After that, Richie co-wrote the song We Are the World with Michael Jackson. The song was composed for charity in the USA for Africa. The song also became a hit.
  

  Lionel Richie with Michael Jackson while composing a song

• In 1986, he released the album Dancing on the Ceiling, which had five hit songs titled Say You, Say Me (No. 1), Dancing on the Ceiling (No. 2), Love Will Conquer All (No. 9), Ballerina Girl (No. 7), and Se La (No. 20).

• In June 1988, his wife, Brenda Harvey, found him at fashion designer Diane Alexander’s apartment. After that, Brenda and Richie got divorced.

• After releasing his album Back to Front in 1992, he took a step back from music.

• In 1996, he returned to the music world. His late 1990s albums, Louder Than Words and Time, did not achieve the same success as his earlier work.

• In the 1990s, Richie faced throat problems and underwent four surgeries in four years.

• Doctors warned that he might lose his singing career. However, a holistic doctor diagnosed it as acid reflux caused by late-night eating.

• In the 2000s, his music albums like Renaissance and Just for You did well in Europe but did not achieve success in the U.S.

• On 7 May 2006, he performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
  

  Lionel Richie while performing at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (2006)

• Richie released his eighth studio album, Coming Home, on 12 September 2006.

• The single, I Call It Love, released in July 2006 and became his biggest U.S. hit in ten years.

• Richie is very popular in several Arab countries. He has performed in Morocco, the UAE, Egypt, and Libya.

• In 2006, ABC News reported that many Iraqis loved his music.

• Richie was told that Iraqi civilians played his song All Night Long on the night when U.S. tanks entered Baghdad.

• In May 2009, Richie announced that he wanted to reunite with the musical band The Commodores.

• He released the album Just Go in 2009.
  

  Lionel Richie on the poster of the song Just Go

• On 7 July 2009, he performed the song Jesus Is Love at Michael Jackson’s memorial service.

• In 2011, Richie and Guy Sebastian recorded the song All Night Long together and performed concerts to raise money for the Australian flood and New Zealand earthquake relief.

• On 26 March 2012, Richie released Tuskegee, his tenth studio album, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart and went platinum in six weeks.

• On 28 June 2015, Richie performed for more than 120,000 people at Glastonbury Festival in England. The show was called ‘triumphant’ by the BBC.

• In September 2017, Richie appeared as a judge in the singing reality show American Idol, which aired on ABC.
  

  Lionel Richie as a judge in the reality show American Idol

• In May 2017, Berklee College of Music honoured Richie at its commencement. Their students performed a medley of his songs.

• In October 2017, reports confirmed that he had secured the rights to produce a Curtis Mayfield biopic.

• In May 2023, he performed at Windsor Castle’s Coronation Concert for King Charles III and Queen Camilla.

• Richie is the First Global Ambassador and First Chairman of the Global Ambassador Group for the Prince’s Trust.

• Richie is a Freemason.

• He once raised over $3.1 million for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. His grandmother survived breast cancer in her 80s and lived to 103. It inspired him to support breast cancer research.

• He has been featured on the cover of many magazines and tabloids.
  

  Lionel Richie on the cover of a magazine

• He likes travelling to distant places in his free time.
  

  Lionel Richie during a trip

• He is an animal lover and has two pet dogs, George and Sylvester. He often shares pictures of his pets on social media.
  

  Lionel Richie with one of his pets

• He is often spotted enjoying alcoholic beverages on various occasions.
  

  Lionel Richie posing with a glass of beer

• He enjoys smoking cigarettes occasionally.
  

  Lionel Richie while smoking a cigar