All About Nina Simone's Daughter Lisa Simone

Nina Simone's daughter is a jazz singer just like her late mother

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Left: Nina Simone performs on a television show at BBC Television Centre in London in 1966. Right: Lisa Simone performs during the JVC Jazz Festival's 'Sing the Truth, A Tribute to Nina Simone' concert on June 21, 2004.

Nina Simone was not only a cultural icon, jazz singer and civil rights activist, she was also a mother to her daughter Lisa Simone.

The Grammy nominee and her second husband Andrew Stoud welcomed their daughter in 1962. Due to Nina's busy schedule and their tumultuous relationship, Lisa lived with family and friends for a good part of her childhood.

Lisa has followed in her mother’s footsteps as a multi-talented performer herself. She’s a singer who has used her voice both in concerts and onstage, and she remains inspired by her mom, who died in 2003 at the age of 70.

Although her relationship with her mother was complicated, Lisa remains interested in Nina's legacy and has helped to produce two films about her life. She also regularly performs a show honoring her mom called "A Daughter’s Tribute to Dr. Nina Simone Big Band Concert."

“The legacy does indeed live on,” Lisa told PEOPLE in a 2023 interview. “That was my mother. I have reached a place where I’m much more clear now. My respect and love for her is even deeper than I ever thought imaginable."

The same year she told The Guardian, “I’m the only person on this entire planet who calls Nina Simone, Mommy. And I do so with joy and with pride – and with a sense of knowing who I am, where I come from and how I carry on this legacy today.”

Here is everything to know about Nina Simone's daughter, Lisa Simone.

She is a singer

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Lisa Simone in concert on February 1, 2019 in Paris, France.

Like Nina, Lisa is a jazz singer. She started her music career on backup vocals and now regularly tours the world with five solo albums under her belt. Lisa has also been a member of the band Liquid Soul, which earned a Grammy nomination in 2000 for their album Here's the Deal.

The songstress was inspired by her mother’s legacy to pursue a career using her voice. In an Instagram post from July 2023, Lisa wrote, “Through music and words, I carry on the family tradition of ‘the griot,’ the storyteller, reminding us that we are all connected."

That said, Nina wasn't always supportive of Lisa wanting to go into the arts. “Twentysomething years ago, when I decided I wanted to do this for a living, my mother was like: 'why?' ” she said in a 2016 interview with the Belfast Telegraph.

She is an actress

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Lisa Simone attends "Dr. Nina Simone's 75th Birthday Celebration" on February 21, 2008 in New York City.

Before Lisa took on singing as a career, she was an actress known for her work on Broadway. Her onstage debut was in Jesus Christ Superstar. In 1996, she took on three musicals at once — Rent, Aida and The Lion King. She was nominated for two theater awards for her performance as Mimi Marquez in Rent’s first national tour.

In 1998, Lisa took a break from theater to focus on singing, before returning to her role in Aida, which won her a National Theatre Award for best actress in a musical. In 2007, she played Fantine in Les Misérables at a theater in St. Louis.

She has produced movies about her mother

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Lisa Simone during the Paris Jazz Festival on July 23, 2017.

Aside from singing and acting, Lisa has also worked as a producer on two films about her mother. In 2015, she was the executive producer of What Happened, Miss Simone?, a Netflix documentary about Nina’s life and career.

Directed by Liz Garbus, the film chronicled Nina’s journey from pianist to civil rights activist and also gave details about Nina’s personal life. Lisa discussed personal details from her childhood, her parent’s marriage and what she learned from Nina in the film's confessionals.

Lisa also executive produced Soul Doctor, the film version of the musical about her mom’s romance and artistic partnership with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach. The younger Simone didn't know about this part of her mother's life until she saw the original musical in 2011.

“My mother will have been dead 20 years and I’m still learning about her journey,” Lisa told PEOPLE upon the 2023 release of Soul Doctor.

She was a civil engineer

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Lisa Simone during the 'Soul Doctor' Press Junket on June 8, 2023.

Before entering the entertainment world, Lisa had an entirely different career. According to an interview with Belfast Telegraph, she had hoped to be a lawyer, but ended up serving as a civil engineer in the U.S. Air Force and is a veteran of the Gulf War.

She worked in the military for over 10 years, stationed in locations including Arizona, South Korea and Germany.

She has shared about her relationship with her mom

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Nina Simone poses with daughter Lisa for a Crest toothpaste advertisement circa 1964.

In What Happened, Miss Simone? Lisa said her late mother struggled with bipolar disorder and depression, and alleged that when her parents split, Nina turned on her.

“She went from being my comfort to the monster in my life,” Lisa said in the documentary. “Now she was the person that was doing the beating and she was beating me.”

Lisa went on to reveal that her mother's actions led her to move. “So when I was 14 I flew to New York and I wound up living with my dad and I never went back,” she said.

Nina's only daughter has also shared some of her happiest memories with her mom. “My mother ... let me put on her wigs and high heels," Lisa told The Guardian in 2023. "We were always playing music, whether it was hers or Miriam Makeba or Otis Redding, so I’d sing and dance ... in her bedroom. It was heaven for a little girl.”

In an interview with PEOPLE the same year, Lisa talked about the revelations she's shared over the years.

“I’ve spoken about the good, the bad, the loving and the not-so-loving," Lisa said. “People have a tendency to remember the negative things. I don’t know any genius who had a happy life. Her manic depression and bipolar disorder didn’t help. But she loved me the best way she knew how.”

She reconciled with her mother before she died

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Nina Simone and Lisa Simone in the UK recording a television program called 'Sound of Soul' on May 28, 1968.

Lisa told The Guardian in 2023 that once she was an adult, she wanted to repair her relationship with her mother.

“All these years I’d been trying to live in her world on her terms and I made a decision that it was now time for her to live in mine," she explained. "Because in my world everyone feels appreciated. So I put her into what I considered a training programme on how to love me.”

Over the next 10 years, Nina and Lisa's relationship improved and the pair started singing together.

“She was like: ‘OK what d’you want to hear?’ And I said all the songs I wanted her to play," Lisa recalled of their moments together at the piano. "She was so touched that I knew them. She said: ‘All these years when we were at odds I thought that you didn’t play my music.’ And I looked at her and said: ‘Mommy, that is the part of you I always had with me. And I played them over and over and over again. Of course I know those songs.’ ”

She was unsure about the 2016 biopic Nina

Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty ; Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis/Getty

Left: Lisa Simone presents her album 'All is well' during the 'Vivement Dimanche' French TV Show on January 7, 2015 in Paris, France. Right: Zoe Saldana attends the Christian Dior Haute Couture Fall Winter 2022 2023 show as part of Paris Fashion Week on July 04, 2022.

In 2012, Zoe Saldana was announced as the lead in the biopic Nina. The news immediately led to controversy about whether Saldana was the appropriate actress to play the role.

At the time, Lisa objected to the casting. “My mother was raised at a time when she was told her nose was too wide, her skin was too dark,” she told The New York Times over a month after the news dropped. “Appearance-wise, this is not the best choice.”

When the film came out in 2016, though, Lisa defended Saldana, saying she was “not upset” with her but rather had concerns with what she deemed factually inaccurate plotlines.

“It’s unfortunate that Zoe Saldana is being attacked so viciously when she is someone who is part of a larger picture,” Lisa told TIME. “It’s clear she brought her best to this project but unfortunately she’s being attacked when she’s not responsible for any of the writing or the lies.”

In a 2020 interview, Saldana apologized and said she regretted taking on the role in an interview with Bese.

"I should have never played Nina," the actress said. "I should have done everything in my power ... to cast a Black woman to play an exceptionally perfect Black woman."

She is married and has three children

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Lisa Simone Kelly, Jayson Jackson, Reanna Simone Kelly and director Liz Garbus attend the 88th Annual Academy Awards on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California.

Lisa married Robert Kelly in 1995. After she repaired her relationship with Nina, the famous singer would attend Lisa's performances with Kelly. “My husband was next to her every time she saw me in a Broadway show and she was one of my biggest fans," Lisa told The Guardian in 2023, adding that she now has three children of her own.

Lisa and Robert tend to keep their relationship private, but in 2016, she shared a photo of the two of them on her public Facebook page celebrating a special anniversary. In the caption, Lisa wrote, “My husband, Rob Kelly, and I celebrated 21 years together today!!”

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