'''Geraldine Estelle "Geri" Halliwell''' (born August 6, 1972) is an English pop singer and songwriter. Halliwell rose to prominence in the late 1990s as one of the five members of the girl group the Spice Girls, where she was known as "Ginger Spice". The name has since been trademarked.
Halliwell was born and grew up in Watford, in the county of Hertfordshire to a British-Swedish father and Spanish mother. She was raised in a Jehovah's Witness household.
Preceding fame
Before starting her music career, she worked as a club dancer in Majorca, a model on the Turkish version of ''Let's Make A Deal'' and as a nude model. Following her rise to fame with the Spice Girls, pornographic photos of Halliwell were re-published in a number of top-shelf magazines, including Club International in the UK.
Musical biography
Original success
Halliwell first found fame as one of the five members of the girl group the Spice Girls. The group joined the most successful musical artists of the 1990s selling over thirty-five million albums with the studio releases ''Spice'' and ''Spiceworld''
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/SpiceSalesFeb2000.JPG Screenshot from Brit Awards 2000 detailing the sales of The Spice Girls up to February 2000. Brit Awards. Retrieved March 13, 2006.]. Their debut single "Wannabe" became the first of a string of number-ones in the United Kingdom (nine in total) and reached the top position in thirty-seven countries around the globe, including Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Other successful releases followed including "Say You'll Be There" and "2 Become 1" from ''Spice'', and "Spice Up Your Life", "Too Much" and "Stop" from ''Spiceworld''.
[Chart performances for the singles released by the Spice Girls. Retrieved from http://foreverspice.com/spicediscography/spicegirls.htm/.] On May 30 1998, Halliwell departed from the Spice Girls to pursue a solo career.
[ ''On This Day'' (May 30, 1998): "http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/31/newsid_2494000/2494855.stm Ginger leaves the Spice Girls". BBC News.] Her actions left a great deal of controversy concerning her former band which had yet to embark on a North American tour, one they would eventually complete without Halliwell.
["http://allpop.canoe.ca/AllPop-SpiceGirls/980530_tour.html Spice Girls will do U.S. tour, with or without Ginger". London (AP). Saturday, May 30, 1998. Aallpop.canoe.ca.] Although she had already left the group, the Spice Girls released "Viva Forever", the final music video to feature Halliwell.
[Answers.com. http://www.answers.com/topic/geri-halliwell#top Geri Halliwell: Biography. ''In 1998 Halliwell split from The Spice Girls. Amid rumours of strife with the girls, she left in May (although she was featured in the August hit, "Viva Forever").''] After Halliwell left, the girls wrote a few songs about her on their album ''Forever'', notably "Goodbye", "Let Love Lead the Way" and "Tell me why".
["http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2774437.stm Spice Girls dismiss
]
