Her name meant "highest, most exalted one" in Arabic. The singer/actress was born in 1979 and first came to national attention when she sang the title song for the animated movie Anastasia at the Academy Awards ceremony. She was on her way to a very promising career as an actress before dying in a plane crash in the Bahamas in 2001.
She is rumored to have once been married to R&B crooner R. Kelly when she was just fifteen. Both parties deny the charge but I'm pretty sure they're lying.
Aaliyah has managed to set herself apart from the current crop of skank teen singers because of her natural beauty & talent and her apparent aversion to being seen in public in short skirts or excessively skanky attire. She described herself as a "homebody" and kept her private life to herself. She was rumored to have been dating Damon Dash, a record producer.
Aaliyah has sold over three million copies of her three albums Age Aint Nothin But a Number , One in a Million and Aaliyah, which debuted in the top ten when it was released in 2001.
She made her film debut opposite Jet Li in Romeo Must Die and was set to star in both Matrix sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. Her death came before any footage of the actress was shot. The character she was to have played, Zee, was recast. Nona Gaye, daughter of Marvin, got the part.
The would-have-been diva finished her second film based on the Anne Rice novel, The Queen of the Damned, in 2000. The film suffered from poor funding and probably wouldn't have been released in 2002 if not for Aaliyah's untimely death.