Naomi Campbell
Naomi Campbell was born on 22 May 1970 in Streatham, London, England. Her mother, Valerie Campbell (née Morris), is a former ballet dancer of Afro-Jamaican descent. In accordance with her mother’s wishes, Campbell has never met her unnamed Chinese Jamaican father, who left then-18-year-old Valerie two months after the birth of their daughter.
As a young child, Campbell was left in the care of a nanny while her mother travelled across Europe with the dance troupe Fantastica. At age 10, she was accepted into the Italia Conti Academy stage school, where she studied ballet. She attended Dunraven School, a comprehensive school run by Inner London Education Authority in Streatham.
In 1999, Campbell developed a spin-off company, the Design House of Naomi Campbell. So far, Campbell has created seven fragrances for women, most of which were released in Europe. In 2000, Campbell introduced her first perfumes, Naomi Campbell and Naomagic. In 2001, Campbell introduced her third perfume, Cat Deluxe, and in 2003 released Mystery. A year later a fifth fragrance was made, Sunset, and in 2005 another fragrance was released, Paradise Passion. Campbell’s latest fragrance is a new version of her Cat Deluxe perfume called Cat Deluxe at Night.
Campbell has several adopted father figures, including Quincy Jones and Chris Blackwell, and an adopted grandfather, Nelson Mandela.
In the summer of 2008 many news reports informed that Campbell is going to marry Russian real estate entrepreneur Vladislav Doronin and therefore accept Russian Orthodox faith.
In 1991, Campbell was featured on Vanilla Ice’s single “Cool as Ice”. Three years later, she sang on the track “Heaven’s Girl” on Quincy Jones’s album Q’s Jook Joint. In 1995, Campbell released her debut album, Baby Woman, which produced the unsuccessful single “Love and Tears”. Although panned by critics and a commercial flop in the UK, where it failed to chart higher than 75, Baby Woman was a success in Japan and sold over 1 million copies worldwide. Campbell’s collaboration with Toshinobu Kubota, “La La La Love Song”, the second single from Baby Woman and the theme song to Long Vacation, became a No. 1 hit in Japan, with the single selling approximately 1,856,000 copies. In 1992, she appeared as Michael Jackson’s love interest in his music video for “In the Closet”.
