Grande's career began as a teenager in the Broadway musical 13 (2008) before she gained prominence as Cat Valentine in the Nickelodeon television series Victorious (2010โ2013) and its spin-off Sam & Cat (2013โ2014). After signing with Republic Records, she released her debut studio album, Yours Truly (2013), a retro-inspired pop and R&B record that debuted atop the Billboard 200.
She incorporated elements of electronic on her next two albums, My Everything (2014) and Dangerous Woman (2016), which both achieved international success, spawning the hit singles "Problem", "Break Free", "Bang Bang", "One Last Time", "Into You", and "Side to Side".
Personal struggles influenced Grande's albums Sweetener (2018) and Thank U, Next (2019), both of which delved into trap. The latter garnered the US Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles "Thank U, Next" and "7 Rings". The title track of her R&B-infused album Positions (2020), as well as the collaborations "Stuck with U" and "Rain on Me", also debuted atop the chart.
After a musical hiatus, she explored dance on Eternal Sunshine (2024), which yielded the US number-one songs "Yes, And?" and "We Can't Be Friends (Wait for Your Love)". She returned to acting with the political satire Don't Look Up (2021) and portrayed Glinda in the fantasy musical film Wicked (2024), which earned her an Academy Award nomination, as well as its sequel Wicked: For Good (2025).
Her electronic-influenced album Petal (2026) contains the US number-one single "Hate That I Made You Love Me".
Grande is one of the best-selling music artists ever and, with over 150 million units sold, among the highest-certified artists in the US by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The highest-paid female musician in 2020, her accolades include three Grammy Awards, a Brit Award, two Billboard Music Awards, three American Music Awards, forty Guinness World Records, and thirteen MTV Video Music Awards.
Grande has amassed seven Billboard 200 number-one albums and ten Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles. Outside of music and acting, she has worked with many charitable organizations and advocates for animal rights, mental health, and gender, racial, and LGBT equality. Her business ventures include the cosmetics brand R.E.M.
Beauty and a fragrance line that has earned over $1 billion in global retail sales. She has a large social media following, being the sixth-most-followed individual on Instagram.
Early life
Ariana Grande-Butera was born on June 26, 1993, in Boca Raton, Florida. She is the daughter of Joan Grande, the Brooklyn-born CEO of Hose-McCann Communications, a manufacturer of marine communications equipment owned by the Grande family since 1964, and Edward Butera, a graphic design firm owner in Boca Raton. Grande is of Sicilian and Abruzzese Italian ancestry.
She has an older half-brother, Frankie Grande, who is an entertainer and producer. Her family moved from New York to Florida before her birth, and her parents separated when she was eight or nine years old. Grande had a close relationship with her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Grande. At age eight, she sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" at the Florida Panthers's home game against the Chicago Blackhawks on January 16, 2002.
As a young child, Grande performed with the Fort Lauderdale Children's Theater, playing her first role as the title character in the musical Annie. She also performed in their productions of The Wizard of Oz and Beauty and the Beast. At age eight, she performed at a karaoke lounge on a cruise ship and with orchestras such as South Florida's Philharmonic, Florida Sunshine Pops, and Symphonic Orchestras. During this time, she attended the Pine Crest School and later North Broward Preparatory.
Career
2008โ2013: Career beginnings and Nickelodeon
When she first arrived in Los Angeles, California, to meet with her managers, she expressed a desire to record an R&B album: "I was like, 'I want to make an R&B album.' They were like 'Um, that's a helluva goal! Who is going to buy a 14-year-old's R&B album?!'" In 2008, Grande was cast as cheerleader Charlotte in the Broadway musical 13.
Grande was cast in the Nickelodeon television show Victorious along with 13 co-star Elizabeth Gillies in 2009. In the sitcom, set at a performing arts high school, she played the "adorably dimwitted" Cat Valentine. She had to dye her hair red every other week for the role, which damaged it. The show premiered in March 2010 to the second-largest audience for a live-action series in Nickelodeon, with 5.7 million viewers.
The role helped propel Grande to teen idol status, but she was more interested in a music career, saying that acting is "fun, but music has always been first and foremost with me".
After the first season of Victorious wrapped, Grande wanted to focus on her music career and began working on her debut album in August 2010. The second season premiered in April 2011 to 6.2 million viewers, becoming the show's highest-rated episode. In May 2011, Grande appeared in Greyson Chance's video for the song "Unfriend You" from his album Hold On 'til the Night (2011), portraying his ex-girlfriend.
She made her first musical appearance on the track "Give It Up" from the Victorious soundtrack in August 2011. While filming Victorious, Grande made several recordings of herself singing covers of songs by Adele, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey and uploaded them to YouTube. A friend of Monte Lipman, chief executive officer (CEO) of Republic Records, came across one of the videos.
Impressed by her vocals, he sent the links to Lipman, who signed her to a recording contract. Grande voiced the title role in the English dub of the Spanish-language animated film Snowflake, the White Gorilla in November 2011. From 2011 to 2013, she was cast in the role of fairy Princess Diaspro in the Nickelodeon revival of Winx Club.
In December 2011, Grande released her first promotional single, "Put Your Hearts Up", recorded for a debut studio album that was never issued. She later disowned the track for its bubblegum pop sound, saying she had no interest in recording music of that genre. The song was later certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
On a second soundtrack, Victorious 2.0, released as an extended play (EP) on June 5, 2012, she supplied vocals as part of the show's cast for the song "5 Fingaz to the Face". The third and final soundtrack, Victorious 3.0, was released on November 6, 2012, which featured a duet by Grande and Victoria Justice titled "L.A.
Boyz", with an accompanying music video being released shortly after. In December 2012, Grande collaborated on the single version of "Popular Song", a duet with British singer and songwriter Mika.
After four seasons, Victorious was not renewed, with the finale airing in February 2013. Grande starred as Snow White in the pantomime-style musical theatre production A Snow White Christmas with Charlene Tilton and Neil Patrick Harris at the Pasadena Playhouse. She played Amanda Benson in Swindle, a 2013 Nickelodeon film adaptation of the children's book of the same name.
Meanwhile, Nickelodeon created Sam & Cat, an iCarly and Victorious spin-off starring Jennette McCurdy and Grande. Grande and McCurdy reprised their roles as Cat Valentine and Sam Puckett on the buddy sitcom, which paired the characters as roommates who form an after-school babysitting business.
2013โ2015: Yours Truly and My Everything
In early 2013, Grande signed with talent manager Scooter Braun and his firm SB Projects. Grande released her debut album, Yours Truly, on August 30, 2013. A pop and R&B record influenced by 1950s doo-wop, it debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 albums chart, with 138,000 copies sold in its first week. Yours Truly also debuted in the top ten in several other countries, including Australia, the UK, Ireland, and the Netherlands.
Its lead single, "The Way", featuring Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller, debuted at number ten on the US Billboard Hot 100, eventually peaking at number nine for two weeks. Grande was later sued by Minder Music for copying the line "What we gotta do right here is go back, back in time" from the 1972 song "Troglodyte (Cave Man)" by the Jimmy Castor Bunch.
The album's second single, "Baby I", was released in July. Its third single, "Right There", featuring Detroit rapper Big Sean, was released in August 2013. They respectively peaked at numbers 21 and 84 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Grande recorded the duet "Almost Is Never Enough" with Nathan Sykes of the Wanted, which was released as a promotional single in August 2013. She also joined Canadian singer Justin Bieber on his Believe Tour for three shows and kicked off her own headlining mini-tour, the Listening Sessions. At the 2013 American Music Awards, she won the award for New Artist of the Year.
She released a four-song Christmas EPโChristmas Kissesโin December and received the Breakthrough Artist of the Year award from the Music Business Association, recognizing her achievements throughout 2013. By January 2014, Grande had begun recording her second studio album with singer-songwriter Ryan Tedder and record producers Benny Blanco and Max Martin.
The same month, she earned the Favorite Breakout Artist award at the People's Choice Awards 2014. In March 2014, Grande sang at the White House concert, "Women of Soul: In Performance at the White House". The following month, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama invited Grande again to perform at the White House for the Easter Egg Roll event.
Grande released her second studio album, My Everything, on August 25, 2014; it debuted atop the US Billboard 200 with 169,000 copies and received generally positive reviews. She explored EDM, dance-pop, and electro genres on the album. Its lead single, "Problem" featuring Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, peaked at number two on the US Billboard Hot 100, and became Grande's first number-one on the UK and New Zealand singles charts.
Selling 438,000 digital copies in its opening week, it achieved the highest first-week sales numbers of 2014 and made Grande the youngest woman, at 20 years old, to debut with over 400,000 downloads at the time. "Problem" became 2014's eighth-best-selling digital single globally, with over 9 million copies sold, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
The album's second single, "Break Free", featuring German musician and producer Zedd, was released on July 3 and reached number four in the United States. She performed the song as the opening of the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards and won Best Pop Video for "Problem". Grande and Nicki Minaj provided guest vocals on "Bang Bang", the lead single from Jessie J's album Sweet Talker, which peaked at number one in the UK and at number three in the US.
The song was added to the deluxe version of My Everything, serving as the third single from the album. It was certified diamond by the RIAA in May 2024, for selling over 10 million units in the US; it marked the first all-female collaboration to achieve the certification. With the singles "Problem", "Break Free", and "Bang Bang", Grande became the second female artist in chart history, joining Adele, with three top-ten singles simultaneously listed on the Billboard Hot 100 as a lead artist.
Grande was the musical performer on Saturday Night Live, with Chris Pratt as the host on September 27, 2014. That same month, the fourth single from My Everything, "Love Me Harder", featuring Canadian recording artist the Weeknd, was released and peaked at number seven in the United States. In November 2014, Grande was featured in Major Lazer's song "All My Love" from the soundtrack album for the film The Hunger Games: Mockingjay โ Part 1 (2014).
Later that month, Grande released the Christmas song "Santa Tell Me" as a single from the reissue of her first Christmas EP, Christmas Kisses (2014). The track became a modern Christmas standard, significantly rising in popularity on streaming services during the holiday season every year. A decade after its release, it reached number five on the Hot 100 issue dated January 4, 2025โbeing the first Christmas song released in the 21st century to appear in the chart's top-five region.
The following month, she appeared on Nicki Minaj's third album, The Pinkprint, with the song "Get on Your Knees". She later released the fifth and the final single from My Everything, "One Last Time", which peaked at number 13 in the US.
In February 2015, Grande embarked on her first worldwide concert tour, the Honeymoon Tour, to further promote My Everything, with shows in North America, Europe, Asia, and South America. Grande was featured on Cashmere Cat's song "Adore", which was released in March 2015. In June, she signed an exclusive publishing contract with the Universal Music Publishing Group, covering her entire music catalog.
Grande also filmed an episode for the Fox Broadcasting Company reality TV series Knock Knock Live (2015), but the show was canceled before her episode aired. She also guest-starred on several episodes of the Fox comedy-horror television series Scream Queens as Sonya Herfmann/Chanel #2 from September to November 2015.
She recorded the duet "E Piรน Ti Penso" with Italian recording artist Andrea Bocelli, which was released in October 2015 as the lead single from Bocelli's album Cinema (2015), and covered the song "Zero to Hero", originally from the animated film Hercules (1997), for the compilation album We Love Disney (2015). Grande also released her second Christmas EP, Christmas & Chill, in December 2015.
