Jamaican singer, actress and supermodel born on May 19, 1948 [some sources claim 1950 or 1952] in Spanish Town, Jamaica, West Indies. She moved to Syracuse, New York, in her early teens, where her parents had relocated and founded the Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ.
She moved to New York at 18 and began a modelling career that took her to Paris where she worked for
Yves Saint Laurent,
Azzedine Alaïa and
Kenzo Takada and photographers such as
Helmut Newton and
Guy Bourdin. While in Paris, she branched out into a recording career, first as a disco diva, working with
Tom Moulton, before evolving towards a reggae / new wave sound created at [l264020] with
Sly & Robbie and marked by striking visuals created by her then partner
Jean-Paul Goude.
Her first connection with music perhaps is her uncredited appearance on the cover of the 1973 reissue of
Ebony Woman.
She published her autobiography in 2015, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs (a line taken from her song Art Groupie), co-written with
Paul Morley, in which she comes back on her early childhood in Jamaica, denies some longstanding rumours and fuels a few new ones.
Grace is the granddaughter of
Dan Williams, daughter of
Marjorie Jones, sister of
Bishop Noel Jones and
Chris Jones, and mother of
Paulo Goude.