American singer Coco Lee, who was born in Hong Kong, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 48 after attempting suicide and going into a coma, according to a statement Carol and Nancy Lee shared on Facebook and Instagram.
According to the statement shared:“Although Coco sought professional help and did her best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her,”
On 2 July, she committed suicide at home and was sent to the hospital. Despite the best efforts of the hospital team to rescue and treat her from her coma, she finally passed away on 5 July, 2023,”
Lee had a career that lasted about 30 years. She is best known for providing the voice of the female warrior Mulan in the Mandarin-language adaptation of Disney’s “Mulan” and for singing the Oscar-nominated song “A Love Before Time” from the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
She was the youngest of three children born to a Malaysian father and a Hong Kong Cantonese mother in Hong Kong in 1975.
Particularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Lee enjoyed enormous popularity in both China and Taiwan. Her passing sparked an outpouring of mourning in both countries, as well as nonstop news coverage in Taiwan.
On China’s Weibo microblogging platform, which is akin to Twitter, one of the most read hashtags about her death received 200 million readings.
BACKGROUND
Before Lee was even born, her father went away, and by the time she was nine years old, her mother had relocated Lee and her sisters to San Francisco in the United States.
She received a recording deal from Capital Artists in Hong Kong after graduating from high school in 1992, which finally prompted her to discontinue her studies at the University of California, Irvine so that she could concentrate on her music career.
Lee joined Sony Music Entertainment in 1996, and her debut album, “Coco Lee,” quickly rose to the top of the charts in Asia.
It didn’t take long for Lee to acquire American and Asian admirers, which paved the way for future projects with other artists and the creation of English-language music.
She appeared in three movies, including “No Tobacco” by Stanley Kwan and “Master of Everything” by Lee Xin, and she recorded 18 studio albums.
In 2011, Bruce Rockowitz, a Canadian entrepreneur and ex-CEO of the Hong Kong supply chain firm Li & Fung, married Lee. Along with her sisters and two stepdaughters, he lives on.
Below is the family’s Instagram post:
“Will miss you forever. Miss your beautiful singing, your hearty laugh and your pretty smile,” one of her fans wrote
We are sending up prayers for her family, friends, and all of her admirers worldwide!
