Mel B of Spice Girls

Melanie Janine Brown was born in Harehills, Leeds and grew up in Burley, West Yorkshire, the daughter of Andrea (Dixon) and Martin Brown. Her father is from the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts and Nevis; while her mother is English. Brown studied performing arts at Intake High School, in Leeds, before entering the entertainment industry. For a time, she worked as a dancer in the holiday resort, Blackpool, Lancashire. After seeing an advertisement for an audition in a newspaper, Brown started her music career in a band known as Touch. The group left the original management team and eventually teamed up with music manager Simon Fuller. In this pairing, she and the other girls became known as the Spice Girls.

Melanie Janine Brown (born 29 May 1975), better known as Mel B, Melanie B and, for a short time, as Melanie G, is a British presenter, television personality, recording artist, actress, author and model.

Brown rose to fame as a member of the girl group the Spice Girls, in which she was known as Scary Spice.

Brown is bisexual. While on the Spiceworld Tour, Brown began a relationship with Dutch dancer Jimmy Gulzar. After she became pregnant, they married in Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire, on 13 September 1998, and she changed her stage name to Melanie G. Their daughter, Phoenix Chi Gulzar, was born in Westminster, London on 19 February 1999. In 2000 Brown filed for divorce, which was finalised later that year. Brown won custody, but had to pay an alimony settlement of $2.8m to her ex-husband. After the end, Gulzar was prosecuted for threatening Brown and attack her sister, Danielle. Gulzar has been cleared by the court.

In 2006 Brown became the subject of tabloid stories because of her relationship with Hollywood actor Eddie Murphy, who would eventually acknowledge he was the father of Brown's then unborn second child, Angel.
In February 2007 Brown began dating film producer Stephen Belafonte. Brown and Belafonte secretly married on 6 June 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and they subsequently renewed their vows with a lavish ceremony in front of their families on 8 November 2008 in Hurghada, Egypt. On 1 September 2011, Brown gave birth to her third child, daughter Madison Belafonte.
On 8 December 2014, it was revealed Brown had been blinded in one eye after a botched laser eye surgery 15 years prior.