Coco Lee died on Wednesday following a suicide attempt that left her in a coma. She was 48 years old and had been suffering from depression.
The Hong Kong-born American singer died in Queen Mary Hospital in Hong Kong, where she had been living.
Coco Lee’s sisters; Carol and Nancy, announced her death in a statement on social media.
“Although, Coco sought professional help and did her best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her,” the statement read.
“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”.
Coco Lee is known for her role in playing the voice of the female warrior Mulan in the Mandarin-language version of Disney’s “Mulan” and performing the Oscar-nominated song “A Love Before Time” from the film “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.”
Born in Hong Kong, in 1975, Coco Lee, real name Ferren Lee, was the youngest of three children of a Hong Kong Cantonese mother and Malaysian father.
Her father died before she was born, and her mother moved her and her sisters to the United States – San Francisco when she was 9.
Lee graduated from high school in 1992 and got a recording contract in Hong Kong with Capital Artists. She would eventually leave her studies at the University of California, Irvine, to focus on her music career.
Lee signed with Sony Music Entertainment in 1996, and her debut album, “Coco Lee,” became the bestselling album in Asia that year.
She then gained fame in the United States and started collaborating on other English songs.
Her 30-year career produced 18 studio albums and three movie appearances; most notably Lee Xin’s “Master of Everything” and “No Tobacco” by Stanley Kwan.
Coco Lee is survived by her husband Bruce Rockowitz, a Canadian businessman who is the former CEO of the Hong Kong supply chain company Li & Fung, her two sisters, and two stepdaughters.