Lena Horne was born on June 30, 1917, in Bedford–Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to Edwin Fletcher Teddy Horne Jr., a gambler, and Edna Louise Scottron, an actress with a Black theatre troupe.

Raised mainly by her paternal grandparents, Cora Calhoun and Edwin Horne, she moved frequently in her early years due to her mother's extensive travels. She attended various schools in Brooklyn and the South, and despite her family's hopes for her to pursue higher education, she was determined to become a performer.

At the age of sixteen, Lena Horne joined the chorus at Harlem's famed Cotton Club, where she performed alongside entertainers like Cab Calloway. She soon became a nightclub performer and later moved to Hollywood and Broadway.

Her career spanned more than seventy years, covering film, television, and theatre. She was one of the first African-American actresses to sign a long-term contract with a major Hollywood studio, MGM.

Her film career included notable roles in movies like "Cabin in the Sky" (1943), "Stormy Weather" (1943), and "The Wiz" (1978). Her rendition of the title song in "Stormy Weather" became her trademark.

On stage, she starred in the Broadway musical "Jamaica" (1957), which won her a New York Drama Critics' Poll Award. In 1981, she starred in a one-woman show, "Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music," which ran for over 300 performances on Broadway and earned her numerous awards.

In her personal life, Lena Horne was married twice. Her first marriage was to Louis Jordan Jones, with whom she had two children, Gail and Edwin. They divorced in 1944, and in 1947, she married Lennie Hayton, a composer and conductor, who passed away in 1971.