Short answers, pulled from the story.
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born on the 2nd of February 1977 in Barranquilla, a city on the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia. Her parents are of Lebanese and Catalan descent, and she also has distant Italian roots.
Shakira has won four Grammy Awards and fifteen Latin Grammy Awards. Her wins include Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album for Fijacion Oral, Vol. 1 in 2006, Best Latin Pop Album for El Dorado in 2018, and Best Latin Pop Album for Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran at the 67th Annual Grammy Awards.
Laundry Service, released on the 13th of November 2001, was Shakira's first mostly English-language album. It sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling album by a female Latin artist and the best-selling album of 2002 overall.
Released in February 2006 and featuring Wyclef Jean, Hips Don't Lie became Shakira's first number one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and reached number one in over 55 other countries. It was the biggest-selling single of the 21st century worldwide at the time. Shakira and Wyclef Jean performed the song at the closing ceremony of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
Shakira founded the Barefoot Foundation, known in Spanish as Fundacion Pies Descalzos, to support education for disadvantaged children. The impulse traces to her childhood in Barranquilla, where her father took her to a local park to see orphaned children, after which she promised herself she would help them once she became famous. In 2006, she received the Billboard Spirit of Hope Award for this work.
Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, released on the 22nd of March 2024, debuted atop the Top Latin Albums and Latin Pop Albums charts, making Shakira the first woman to achieve number-one albums across four different decades on the Billboard Latin album charts. The album also won the Grammy Award for Best Latin Pop Album.
The Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran World Tour, which launched in February 2025, became the highest-grossing Latin tour ever. As of January 2026, it had generated $421.6 million and sold 3.3 million tickets. A free concert in Rio de Janeiro in May 2026 drew an estimated two million people, the largest audience of Shakira's career.