Céline Dion

Rising from humble beginnings to become an international pop star selling more than 100 million albums worldwide, Celine Dion's career spanned years of superstardom in the 1990s as well as more diverse output and touring in the 2000s and 2010s. Born in Charlemagne, Quebec, Dion was the youngest in Adhemar and Therese Dion's family of 14 children. She was raised in a household filled with love for children and music, and her parents and siblings were important figures in the early development of her singing career. Celine began singing in her parents' piano bar when she was just five years old. By age 12, she had written one of her first songs, "Ce N'etait Qu'un Rêve" (It Was Only a Dream), which she recorded with the help of her mother and brother and shipped to a manager named René Angélil, whose name they found on the back of an album by Ginette Reno, a popular Francophone singer. When the 12-year-old eventually performed for Angélil, he cried and set in motion the process of making her a Québécois, and later, an international, star. He mortgaged his house to pay for her first two albums, producing a local number one single. In 1983 she became the first Canadian to have a gold record in France and she won a gold medal at the Yamaha songwriting competition in Japan. Her worldwide reputation was in the making, but success in the United States was not yet forthcoming.