Ariana Grande: the Boca Raton theatre kid who sang through the worst night of her life

Ariana Grande has one of the most technically impressive voices in modern pop and a public life that has repeatedly demanded more of her than singing. She went from a Nickelodeon sitcom to arena headliner in four years, survived a terrorist attack at her own concert and organised the benefit that followed within two weeks, lost a former partner to an overdose months later and wrote a hit album about it in a fortnight. In 2024 she added an Academy Award nomination for playing Glinda. None of that was the plan.

She was born Ariana Grande-Butera on 26 June 1993 in Boca Raton, Florida, to parents who had moved south from New York. Her mother, Joan Grande, is the chief executive of Hose-McCann Communications, a marine communications manufacturer. Her father, Edward Butera, runs a graphic design firm. They divorced when she was around nine, and she has spoken about how hard that period was. Her older half-brother Frankie Grande works in theatre and television. The family is Italian American, and she grew up in a house where musical theatre was normal rather than aspirational.

She performed early and often. At eight she sang the national anthem at a Florida Panthers game, and she worked steadily with the Fort Lauderdale Children's Theatre in productions including "Annie," "The Wizard of Oz" and "Beauty and the Beast." At fifteen she was cast as Charlotte in the Broadway musical "13," which opened at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre in October 2008 with an all-teenage cast and band. She won a National Youth Theatre Association Award for the role. She has said she wanted to be a jazz and R&B singer and treated acting as the route in.

Nickelodeon opened the door. She was cast as Cat Valentine, a scattered redhead with a helium voice, in "Victorious," which ran from 2010 to 2013, and then in the spin-off "Sam & Cat" with Jennette McCurdy from 2013 to 2014. She dyed her hair red for four years for the part and has talked since about the damage that did and about the constraints of children's television. Both she and several co-stars have spoken publicly in recent years about the working culture on those productions, and McCurdy's 2022 memoir brought the subject wider attention.

Her music career started while the sitcom was still running. "Yours Truly," released in 2013, was a doo-wop and 1990s R&B record led by "The Way," and it entered the Billboard 200 at number one. "My Everything" followed in 2014 with "Problem," "Break Free" and "Bang Bang," pushing her into full pop production and global radio. "Dangerous Woman" in 2016 gave her a harder, more adult identity and the tour that carried it around the world. Her instrument was the thing critics kept returning to: a four-octave range with a whistle register she used as punctuation rather than as a stunt.

On 22 May 2017 a suicide bomber attacked the foyer of Manchester Arena as the audience left her concert. Twenty-two people were killed, many of them children and teenagers, and hundreds were injured. Grande suspended the tour and flew home. Within days she announced a benefit concert, and on 4 June 2017 she staged One Love Manchester at Old Trafford Cricket Ground with Coldplay, Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Liam Gallagher, Take That and others. It was watched by tens of millions and raised around £17 million for the We Love Manchester Emergency Fund. She was made an honorary citizen of Manchester in July 2017.

She has since been open about the cost. She spoke about post-traumatic stress, anxiety and dissociation, published a brain scan showing the effects and cancelled or restructured parts of later tours around her health. She also had a bee tattooed on her, the symbol of Manchester, and has returned to the city and to the families in ways she has largely kept unpublicised.

The eighteen months that followed were relentless. "Sweetener" arrived in August 2018 and won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album. In September 2018 the rapper Mac Miller, her former partner, died of an accidental overdose. Her engagement to the comedian Pete Davidson ended weeks later. She responded by writing and recording "Thank U, Next" in a matter of weeks and releasing it in February 2019, five months after the previous album. The title track named her exes and forgave them in public, "7 Rings" topped charts worldwide and for a week she held the top three positions on the Billboard Hot 100, a feat previously managed only by the Beatles.

The years after were quieter by design. She released "Positions" in 2020, married the estate agent Dalton Gomez in May 2021 in a small ceremony and served as a coach on "The Voice" the same year. In November 2021 she launched r.e.m. beauty, a cosmetics line named after a Beatles song, built around lip and eye products and sold with unusually restrained marketing for a celebrity brand. The marriage ended in 2023, and the coverage of her subsequent relationship with her "Wicked" co-star Ethan Slater was hostile in a way she has since described as unfair to everyone involved.

"Wicked" was the long project. She was cast as Glinda in November 2021 alongside Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba, and the two films were shot back to back across 2022 and 2023 in a production she has called the happiest working period of her life. The first part opened on 22 November 2024, took more than $700 million worldwide and earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. "Wicked: For Good" followed in November 2025. She sang live on set for several numbers and used a soprano technique she had trained in as a teenager and rarely used in pop.

Her music kept moving alongside the films. "Eternal Sunshine," released in March 2024, was a lean, house-tinged breakup record that debuted at number one and produced "Yes, And?" and "We Can't Be Friends." She expanded it in March 2025 as "Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead," paired with a short film. In September 2025 she announced her first tour in years, the Eternal Sunshine Tour, with arena dates running through 2026. The announcement itself was notable for the number of shows she declined to add, which she framed as a decision about what she could sustain.

The through-line is a performer who keeps having to work in public through things most people would take offline. She has won two Grammy Awards, placed multiple albums at number one on debut, spent long stretches as one of the most followed women on Instagram and built a beauty business that stands on its own. She has also been a bereaved partner, a survivor of a mass-casualty attack and the subject of years of tabloid speculation about her body and her relationships. The useful measure of her career is not the chart run. It is that after Manchester she chose to go back on that stage two weeks later, and then kept going.