Ariana Grande-Butera was born 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 communications and safety equipment, and Edward Butera, a graphic design firm owner in Boca Raton. Grande is of Italian descent, and she refers to herself as an Italian American, “half Sicilian and half Abruzzese”. Her name was inspired by Princess Oriana from Felix the Cat: The Movie. She has an older half-brother, Frankie Grande, an entertainer and producer, and she has a close relationship with her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Grande. Grande’s family moved from New York to Florida when her mother was pregnant with her, and her parents separated when she was around 8 or 9 years old.
She is an American singer, songwriter and actress. She began her career in 2008 in the Broadway musical 13, before playing the role of Cat Valentine in the Nickelodeon television series Victorious from 2010 to 2013, and in the spinoff Sam & Cat from 2013 to 2014. Grande made her first musical appearance on the soundtrack for Victorious and was signed to Republic Records in 2011 after music executive Monte Lipman came across one of her YouTube videos covering songs.
At the age of ten, Grande co-founded the South Florida youth singing group Kids Who Care, which performed for charitable fund-raising events and raised over $500,000 for charities in 2007 alone. In 2009, as a member of the charitable organization Broadway in South Africa, Grande, along with her brother Frankie, performed and taught music and dance to children in Gugulethu, South Africa.
She was featured with Bridgit Mendler and Kat Graham in Seventeen magazine in a 2013 public campaign to end online bullying called “Delete Digital Drama”. After watching the film Blackfish that year, she urged fans to stop supporting SeaWorld and became a vegan. In September 2014, Grande participated at the charitable Stand Up to Cancer television program, performing her song “My Everything” in memory of her grandfather, who had died of cancer that July. Grande has adopted several rescue dogs as pets and promoted pet adoption at some of her concerts. In 2016, she launched with MAC Cosmetics a line of lip shades called “Ariana Grande’s MAC Viva Glam”, the profits of which benefit people affected by HIV and AIDS.
In 2015, Grande and Miley Cyrus performed a cover of Crowded House’s “Don’t Dream It’s Over” as part of Cyrus’ “Backyard Sessions” to benefit her Happy Hippie Foundation, which helps homeless and LGBT youths. Later that year, Grande headlined the Dance On the Pier event, part of the LGBT Pride Week in New York City. In 2016, Grande joined Madonna to raise funds for orphaned children in Malawi. In 2016, Grande and Victoria Monét recorded “Better Days” in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. To aid the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing, Grande organized the One Love Manchester concert, donated a rerelease of “One Last Time” and her live performance of “Over the Rainbow” at the concert, and released a live album of the concert. The total amount raised was reportedly $23 million (more than £17 million).
In September 2017, Grande performed in A Concert for Charlottesville, benefiting the victims of the August 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. In March 2018, she participated in March for Our Lives to support gun control legislation.
