Facts

Ariana Grande-Butera was born in Boca Raton, Florida, to Joan Grande, the chief executive officer of Hose-McCann Communications, a telephone and alarm system company, and Edward Butera, who owns a graphic design firm in Boca Raton. Her name was originally inspired by Princess Oriana from Felix the Cat(1959).Grande is of Italian descent. She has an older half-brother, Frankie Grande, who is an actor, dancer and producer, and she is close with her maternal grandmother, Marjorie Grande. Grande's family moved from New York to Florida when her mother was pregnant with Grande, and her parents separated when she was around 8 or 9 years old.

Grande's music career began with the soundtrack Music from Victorious . She signed a recording contract with Republic Records and released her debut studio album, Yours Truly in 2013, which debuted at No. 1 on the US Billboard 200. The album's lead single, "The Way", reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, with critics comparing her wide vocal range to Mariah Carey's range.

Grande has been nominated for two Grammy Awards and has won an MTV Video Music Award, two MTV Europe Music Awards and two American Music Awards (2013 and 2015).

Grande's modest look early in her career was described as "age appropriate", compared with other pop stars who grew up in the public eye. Jim Farber of New York Daily News wrote in 2014 that Grande received less attention "for how little she wears or how graphically she moves than for how she sings." By 2014, however, she opted to wear short skirts and crop tops with knee-high boots in performances and on red carpets.

Grande possesses a four-octave and a semitone soprano vocal range, and the whistle register. With the release of her debut album, Yours Truly (2013), Grande was deemed the "mini Mariah Carey" and the "new Mariah Carey" by some critics because of her wide vocal range, sound and musical material.

Grande's music is generally pop and R&B, and it has elements of funk, dance and hip hop.Grande said she grew up mainly listening to urban pop and 90s music. Grande said of her debut album, Yours Truly (2013), that "half of it is a throwback and like very familiar feeling, feel good, and then half of it is something that I've created that's sort of special and unique and refreshing".

Grande was raised a Roman Catholic but abandoned Catholicism during the reign of Pope Benedict, citing opposition to the church's stance on homosexuality, noting that her brother, Frankie is gay. She has followed Kabbalah teachings since the age of twelve or earlier, along with Frankie, believing "the basis lies in the idea that if you're kind to others, good things will happen to you."

In early 2015, Grande embarked on her extensive The Honeymoon Tour of North America and Europe, with several later stops in Asia and South America.The tour earned $14 million in its first 25 performances, selling 290,699 tickets. Following the tour's early success, more dates were added, and the tour concluded in October 2015 after a total of nearly 90 dates.Reviews of the tour performances generally praised Grande's vocals and ability to convey emotion in the songs but found the concerts to be over-produced: "Some judicious editing would've elevated the evening from surprising to satisfying and possibly even shockingly good. As it is, Grande is so busy piling on the spectacle she neglects to highlight the one thing – those deceptively powerful pipes – setting her apart from her contemporaries." Grande was featured on Cashmere Cat's song "Adore", which was released in March during her Honeymoon Tour, with a review in USA Today saying: "Grande's towering vocals have never sounded better than on this offbeat R&B track."

Grande recorded her debut album, Yours Truly, over a three-year period. She completed the album, originally titled Daydreamin', in June 2013; it was released on August 30, 2013. She is credited as a songwriter on several tracks of the album. In September 2013, it debuted at No. 1 on the US Billboard 200 albums chart, with 138,000 copies sold in its first week, making Grande the first female artist, since Kesha, to have her first album debut atop of the charts and ranking her the fifteenth female artist overall.

Grande auditioned for the Nickelodeon television show Victorious in New York along with 13 co-star Elizabeth Gillies in 2009. In this sitcom set in a performing arts high school, Grande was cast as Cat Valentine. Grande had to dye her hair red every other week for the role because the executive producer, Dan Schneider, did not want all cast members to be brunettes, and the red hair was also a feature that the network felt would fit the personality of Cat. The show premiered in March 2010 to the second largest audience for a live-action series in Nickelodeon history with 5.7 million viewers. The role helped propel Grande to teen idol status, but she was more interested in a music career stating that acting is "fun, but music has always been first and foremost with me."

The Listening Sessions was the debut minitour by American singer Ariana Grande. The tour supported Grande's debut studio album, Yours Truly, which was released August 30, 2013. The tour began on August 13, 2013 and concluded September 22, 2013 and showcased all of the material from Grande's debut studio album, with the exception of "Popular Song". The tour grossed $679,360 from 11 shows across North America. The tour was said to expand after the release of Yours Truly, but failed to materialize due to Grande's acting schedule and recording sessions for her second studio album, My Everything.

The Honeymoon Tour was the second concert tour, first world tour and first arena tour by American singer Ariana Grande in support of her second studio album, My Everything (2014). The tour, which was officially announced on September 10, 2014, traveled across North America, Europe, Asia, and South America. It began on February 25, 2015 in Independence, Missouri and concluded on October 25, 2015 in São Paulo, Brazil. The Honeymoon Tour grossed $41.8 million from 81 shows with a total attendance of 808,667.