By Alexandra Abumuhor
Colombian musicia
Full Name: Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll
Date of Birth: February 2, 1977
Place of Birth: Barranquilla, Colombia
Horoscope: Aquarius
Best Friend: ------
Partners: Antonio de la Rúa (2000–2010), Gerard Piqué (2011–2022)
Children: Sasha Piqué Mebarak, born January 29, 2015, Milan Piqué Mebarak, born January 22, 2013.
Net Worth: $300 million
Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was born on Feb. 2, 1977 in Barranquilla, Colombia.
Shakira is of Colombian and Lebanese descent, her father, William Mebarak Chadid was born in New York City to a Lebanese family.
When Chadid was 5 years old, he moved with his family to Colombia. The singer's dad ended up marrying Nidia del Carmen Ripoll Torrado.
Torrado is a stepmother of eight children by her husband’s ex-wife, they are Shakira's older half-siblings.
Shakira was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools throughout her childhood.
The singer is known for her belly-dancing skills, and that all started when her dad took her to a local Middle Eastern restaurant, where Shakira, then 4 years old first heard the Goblet drum, a traditional drum used in Middle-Eastern music which typically accompanied belly dancing.
Little Shakira started dancing on the table and that's when Shakira knew she wanted to be a performer.
She started singing to nuns at school and to her teachers, but she was in the second grade, she got rejected for the school choir because her change of pitch (Vibrato) was too 'strong.'
Shakira's first debut album, Magia, was recorded with Sony Music Colombia when she was only 13 years old. And the songs in the collection were all made by her since she was 8 years old.
However, the album did not do very well, as it only sold 1.200 copies worldwide.
Shakira's second studio album, Peligro was released Mar. 25, 1993, but she was not too happy with the outcome and results and later refused to promote it.
The albums have now been pulled from release and are not considered official Shakira albums, but promotional ones.
Shakira continued her crossover success in 2005 with the release of the Spanish-language Fijación oral, vol. 1 in June and the English-language Oral Fixation, Vol. 2 in November.
Both albums were in the top five in the United States.
Shakira released her next English language album titled She Wolf in 2009, where she focused on electro-pop genre.
And in 2010, she released her hit single Waka Waka (This Time for Africa), and the song was used as the national anthem for the 2010 World Cup.
In 2014, she released an album in which she collaborated with American superstar Rihanna, a few years after in 2017, she released: "El Dorado."
In 2020 Shakira and Jennifer Lopez performed at the Super Bowl halftime show.
2021 was there Shakira sold her catalog of 145 songs to Hipgnosis Songs Fund, but the financial details of the sale have not been shared.
And most recently, Shakira released a collaboration with Argentine DJ Bizarrap titled "Shakira: Bzrp Music Sessions Vol. 53" the single was dedicated to her partner of more than 12 years, Gerard Piqué who cheated on her.
Dating History
Shakira has a low-key dating history, in 1997 it was rumored that she was in a relationship with a telenovela star named Osvaldo Rios, in an interview, Shakira shared that they dated for only eight months.
A few years after, the singer was in a long-term romance with lawyer Antonio de la Rúa, the pair began dating in 2000 and ended their romance 10 years after in 2010. The split came as a mutual decision between the two to take some time apart.
The Waka Waka singer began dating footballer Gerard Piqué in 2011, and the duo now share two sons together, Milan and Sasha, Shakira and Piqué dated for 12 years before heading their separate ways amid cheating rumors.
