Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born on March 28, 1986, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, New York City, to an upper-middle-class Catholic family.
From age 11, Stefani attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls Roman Catholic school.
In 2003, at age 17, Gaga gained early admission to Collaborative Arts Project 21, a music school at New York University (NYU)'s Tisch School of the Arts, and lived in an NYU dorm. She studied music there and improved her songwriting skills by writing essays on art, religion, social issues, and politics.
In a 2014 interview, Gaga said she had been raped at age 19, for which she later underwent mental and physical therapy. She has post-traumatic stress disorder that she attributes to the incident and says that support from doctors, family, and friends has helped her.
In 2005, Gaga recorded two songs with hip-hop singer Melle Mel for an audiobook accompanying Cricket Casey's children's novel The Portal in the Park.
Fusari collaborated with Gaga, who traveled daily to New Jersey, helping to develop her songs and compose new material. The producer said they began dating in May 2006 and claimed to have been the first person to call her "Lady Gaga", which was derived from Queen's song "Radio Ga Ga". Their relationship lasted until January 2007.
Gaga began performing at neo-burlesque shows, which according to her represented freedom. During this time, she met performance artist Lady Starlight, who helped mold her onstage persona. The pair began performing at downtown club venues.
In November 2007, Herbert signed Gaga to his label Streamline Records, an imprint of Interscope Records, established that month. Gaga later credited Herbert as the man who discovered her.
Having served as an apprentice songwriter during an internship at Famous Music Publishing, Gaga struck a music publishing deal with Sony/ATV. As a result, she was hired to write songs for Britney Spears, New Kids on the Block, Fergie, and The Pussycat Dolls.
By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles to work extensively with her record label to complete her debut album, The Fame, and to set up her own creative team called the Haus of Gaga, modeled on Andy Warhol's Factory. The Fame was released on August 19, 2008, and reached number one in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland, and the UK, as well as the top five in Australia and the US.
Poker Face was the world's best-selling single of 2009, with 9.8 million copies sold that year, and spent a record 83 weeks on Billboard magazine's Digital Songs chart.
Gaga headlined her worldwide Fame Ball Tour, which ran from March to September 2009. While traveling the globe, she wrote eight songs for The Fame Monster, a reissue of The Fame. Those new songs were also released as a standalone EP on November 18, 2009.
Gaga started her second worldwide concert tour, The Monster Ball Tour, and released The Remix, her final record with Cherrytree Records and among the best-selling remix albums of all time. The Monster Ball Tour ran from November 2009 to May 2011 and grossed $227.4 million, making it the highest-grossing concert tour for a debut headlining artist.
At the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, she won eight awards from 13 nominations, including Video of the Year for "Bad Romance". She was the most nominated artist for a single year, and the first female to receive two nominations for Video of the Year at the same ceremony.
In 2011, Gaga also worked with Tony Bennett on a jazz version of "The Lady Is a Tramp", with Elton John on "Hello Hello" for the animated feature film Gnomeo & Juliet, and with The Lonely Island and Justin Timberlake on "3-Way (The Golden Rule)".
The Fame Monster won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album, and "Bad Romance" won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Short Form Music Video at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.
In February 2011, Gaga released "Born This Way", the lead single from her studio album of the same name. The song sold more than one million copies within five days, earning the Guinness World Record for the fastest-selling single on iTunes.
Born This Way was released on May 23, 2011, and debuted atop the Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 1.1 million copies. The album sold eight million copies worldwide and received three Grammy nominations, including Gaga's third consecutive nomination for Album of the Year.
She also embarked on the Born This Way Ball tour in April 2012, which was scheduled to conclude the following March, but ended one month earlier when Gaga canceled the remaining dates due to a labral tear of her right hip that required surgery. While refunds for the cancellations were estimated to be worth $25 million, the tour grossed a total of $183.9 million globally.
In August 2013, Gaga released the album's lead single "Applause", which reached number one in Hungary, number four in the US, and number five in the UK.
The second Artpop single, "Do What U Want", featured singer R. Kelly and was released later that month, topping the charts in Hungary and reaching number 13 in the US. Gaga removed the song from all streaming platforms in 2019 in the light of allegations made against Kelly sexually abusing several women; Gaga apologized forever for collaborating with him.
Artpop was released on November 6, 2013, to mixed reviews. Helen Brown in The Daily Telegraph criticized Gaga for making another album about her fame and doubted the record's originality, but found it "great for dancing". The album debuted atop the Billboard 200 chart and sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide as of July 2014.
In September 2014, Gaga released a collaborative jazz album with Tony Bennett titled Cheek to Cheek. Before the album was released, it produced the singles "Anything Goes" and "I Can't Give You Anything but Love". Cheek to Cheek received generally favorable reviews. The record was Gaga's third consecutive number-one album on the Billboard 200 and won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album.
She and Diane Warren co-wrote the song "Til It Happens to You" for the documentary The Hunting Ground, which earned them the Satellite Award for Best Original Song and an Academy Award nomination in the same category.
Gaga had spent much of her early life wanting to be an actress and achieved her goal when she starred in American Horror Story: Hotel. Running from October 2015 to January 2016, Hotel is the fifth season of the television anthology horror series, American Horror Story, in which Gaga played a hotel owner named Elizabeth. At the 73rd Golden Globe Awards, Gaga received the Best Actress in a Miniseries or Television Film award for her work on the season.
In September 2016, she released her fifth album's lead single, "Perfect Illusion", which topped the charts in France and reached number 15 in the US.
The album, titled Joanne, was named after Gaga's late aunt, who was an inspiration for the music. It was released on October 21, 2016, and became Gaga's fourth number one album on the Billboard 200, making her the first woman to reach the US chart's summit four times in the 2010s.
Gaga performed as the headlining act during the Super Bowl LI halftime show in 2017. Her performance featured a group of hundreds of lighted drones forming various shapes in the sky above Houston's NRG Stadium. It attracted 117.5 million viewers in the United States, exceeding the game's total of 113.3 million viewers. The performance led to a surge of 410,000 song downloads in the U.S. for Gaga and earned her an Emmy nomination.
In August, Gaga began the Joanne World Tour. Gaga's creation of Joanne and preparation for her halftime show performance were featured in the documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two, which premiered on Netflix in September.
Throughout the film, she was seen suffering from chronic pain, which was later revealed to be the effect of a long-term condition called fibromyalgia. It resulted in Gaga canceling the last ten shows of the Joanne World Tour, which ultimately grossed $95 million from 842,000 tickets sold.
Gaga starred as struggling singer Ally in Bradley Cooper's musical romantic drama A Star Is Born, a remake of the 1937 film of the same name, it was premiered at the 2018 Venice Film Festival, and was released worldwide that October. For the role, Gaga won the National Board of Review and Critics' Choice awards for Best Actress, in addition to receiving nominations for the Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and BAFTA Award for Best Actress.
Gaga launched her first, vegan makeup line, Haus Laboratories, in September 2019 exclusively on Amazon. Consisting of 40 products, including liquid eyeliners, lip glosses, and face mask stickers, it reached number-one on Amazon's list of best-selling lipsticks.
After an appearance in the television special Friends: The Reunion, in which Gaga sang "Smelly Cat" with Lisa Kudrow, she will portray Patrizia Reggiani, who was convicted of hiring a hitman to murder her ex-husband and former head of the Gucci fashion house Maurizio Gucci, in an upcoming film directed by Ridley Scott, titled House of Gucci.
Chromatica was preceded by two singles, "Stupid Love", on February 28, 2020, and "Rain on Me", with Ariana Grande, on May 22. The latter debuted at number one in the US, making Gaga the third person to top the country's chart in the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s.
Gaga's sixth studio album, Chromatica, was released on May 29, 2020, to positive reviews. It debuted atop the US charts, becoming her sixth consecutive number-one album in the country, and reached the top spot in more than a dozen other territories including Australia, Canada, France, Italy, and the UK.
During the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States on January 20, 2021, Gaga sang the US national anthem.
In February 2021, her dog walker Ryan Fischer was hospitalized after getting shot in Hollywood. Two of her French Bulldogs, Koji and Gustav, were taken while a third dog named Miss Asia escaped and was subsequently recovered by police. Gaga later offered a $500,000 reward for the return of her pets.
Two days later, on February 26, a woman brought the dogs to a police station in Los Angeles. Both were unharmed. Los Angeles Police initially said the woman who dropped off the dogs did not appear to be involved with the shooting, but on April 29, she was one of five people charged in connection with the shooting and theft.
In April 2021, Gaga teamed up with Champagne brand Dom Pérignon, and appeared in an ad shot by Nick Knight.
To promote it, Gaga performed with Bennett in New York City for MTV Unplugged, on July 2.
Gaga performed with Bennett a pair of shows at Radio City Music Hall, on August 3 and 5, called One Last Time: an Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga.
On September 3, Gaga released her third remix album, Dawn of Chromatica.
This was followed by her second collaborative album with Tony Bennett, titled Love for Sale, on September 30. The record received generally favorable reviews and debuted at number eight in the US. The record received generally favorable reviews and debuted at number eight in the US.