After a successful career on Broadway, Stephanie Mills reinvented herself as a
chart-topping R&B singer, landing a string of crossover hits on the American
charts during the late-1970s and 1980s. She was born on March 22, 1957, and grew
up in Brooklyn's Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood, where she began singing at
Cornerstone Baptist Church. She became a Broadway actress at age 9, appearing in
Maggie Flynn alongside fellow child star Irene Cara, who would later co-write
and perform the 1983 hit "Flashdance… What a Feeling." Starting in 1974, Mills
began a five-year run as Dorothy i...