According to Wikipedia:

Leona Louise Lewis (born 3 April 1985) is an English pop and R&B singer–songwriter. Lewis rose to fame in 2006 as the winner of the third series of the British television series The X Factor.

Lewis has become a multi-platinum selling artist and three time Grammy Award nominee. She has released two albums to date, Spirit and Echo, in 2007 and 2009 respectively. Spirit became the fastest-selling debut album and the biggest seller of 2007 in both the UK and Republic of Ireland, and made Lewis the first British solo artist to top the Billboard 200 with a debut album. Her second album, Echo, was released in November 2009.

Lewis’s debut single “A Moment Like This” became the fastest selling UK single after being downloaded over 50,000 times within thirty minutes of its release. Her second single, “Bleeding Love”, reached number one positions in over thirty singles charts around the world. In November 2008 she set a record in the UK for the fastest selling download-only release with her cover version of the Snow Patrol song “Run” which sold 69,244 copies in two days. In November 2009, the first set of dates for her 2010 debut world tour were announced.

Lewis has sold over 6.5 million albums worldwide.

Her official Website shares this nugget from her past:

For Lewis, making a solo album was the chance to realize a dream she’s had since the tender age of 5, when her parents (father is Guyanese/mother is Welsh) enrolled her into London’s prestigious Sylvia Young Theatre School. Lewis then attended the performing arts academy The BRIT School, where she honed her songwriting and production skills. Encouraged by winning several talent contests as a teen, she left school and took part-time jobs ‘” including working in Pizza Hut as a waitress ‘” to earn money to pay for studio time. ‘It was about doing my music,’ she says. ‘It has always been my passion to be a singer and songwriter.’

Here’s the video to “Happy” off her new album: