Hamasaki Ayumi is a Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress. Ayumi has been dubbed the "Empress of J-Pop" because of her popularity and widespread influence in Japan and throughout Asia. She has sold over 60 million albums, making her the best-selling solo artist and the only solo artist to sell more than 60 million in total in Asia.

Born and raised in Fukuoka, she moved to Tokyo at fourteen to pursue a career in entertainment. In 1998, under the tutelage of Avex CEO Max Matsuura, she released a string of modestly selling singles that concluded with her 1999 debut album A Song for ××. The album debuted at the top of the Oricon charts and remained there for four weeks, establishing her popularity in Japan.

She married the Austrian actor and model, Manuel Schwarz, in the United States on January 1, 2011, and divorced in 2012.

She then married an American medical student 10 years her junior on March 3, 2014, and divorced on September 30, 2016.

She had her first child at the end of 2019, and on May 1, 2021, she announced the birth of her second child. Edit Biography