Coco Lee, beloved Hong Kong singer-songwriter and Mulan voice actor, dies at 48

Coco Lee, the beloved Hong Kong singer-songwriter who voiced Mulan in the Mandarin version of the Disney classic and was featured on the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Runaway Bride soundtracks, has died. She was 48.

The "Before I Fall in Love" singer died by suicide, her sisters Nancy and Carol announced in a joint Instagram statement on Wednesday. The siblings revealed that CoCo had been suffering from depression for several years but that "her condition deteriorated drastically over the last few months."

"Although CoCo sought professional help and did her best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her," they wrote. "On 2 July, she committed suicide at home and was sent to the hospital. Despite the best efforts of the hospital team to rescue and treat her from her coma, she finally passed away on 5 July, 2023."

Born in Hong Kong and raised in the U.S., Lee began her singing career in the 1990s and went on to release more than 15 studio albums over the next 30 years. She also voiced the title character in the Mandarin version of the 1998 Disney animated classic Mulan, for which she also performed the heroine's song "Reflection."

The vocalist, who performed in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, is best known for her hits "Di Da Di," "Yesterday's Love," and "Before I Fall in Love," the latter of which was featured in Julia Roberts and Richard Gere's 1999 romantic comedy Runaway Bride.

Lee became the first Chinese American singer to perform at the Oscars when she sang her Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon track "A Love Before Time," which was nominated for Best Original Song, at the awards ceremony in 2001. That same year, she also became Chanel's first Chinese ambassador.

Lee also served as a judge on several Chinese and Taiwanese singing competition series, including Chinese Idol, World's Got Talent, and Super Idol. In 2015, she competed on the Chinese version of the popular singing program I Am a Singer and won. Although her final album, titled Illuminate (盛開), was released in 2013, Lee continued to tour and release new music throughout the past decade.

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