Jenifer Jeanette Lewis, born on January 25, 1957, is an American actress. She started in Broadway musicals and sang backup for Bette Midler before being in movies like Beaches (1988) and Sister Act (1992). Jenifer is known for playing moms in films like What’s Love Got to Do With It (1993), Poetic Justice (1993), and The Preacher’s Wife (1996). People call her “The Mother of Black Hollywood.”
She also voiced Mama Odie in The Princess and the Frog (2009) and Flo in Pixar’s Cars. In her early life, Jenifer sang in church and later moved to New York for her career.
In the 2000s, she starred in Strong Medicine on TV and had roles in films like Cast Away (2000) and The Brothers (2001). She also played Lana Hawkins in Black-ish from 2014, earning award nominations.
Jenifer was born in Kinloch, Missouri, and is the youngest of seven children. She went to Kinloch High School and later to Webster University in Missouri.
Jenifer faced challenges in her personal life. She got married in 2012 to Arnold Byrd and has an adopted daughter named Charmaine Lewis. In 2015, she was a victim of a romantic scam. In 1990, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but she embraced it after years of therapy and medication, sharing her journey to inspire self-love. She wrote a book about her life, titled The Mother of Black Hollywood, in 2017.