Jeanne Mas was born on February 28th, 1958 in Alicante, Spain. She started studying languages at the University of Nanterre (near Paris). After a Bachelors degree in Spanish and Italian, she took off for Italy in order to perfect the language she had just learned. She settled in Rome when she was only 19 years old. In Rome, she took dance classes and started landing small parts in commercials as well as in full-length films. This didn't seem to be her calling. A woman of action, she was not one of those women who could stand the waiting that this type of activity required. So she started a job as a television host on Italian television.

She also opened a crepe restaurant in Rome that did very well. At the same time, she started off in music and toured with a rock group which was rather hardcore. She recorded several 45's, one in English and the others in Italian. Then she met Romano Musumara who since then has become one of the most famous Italian composers of popular music. She would write her first hit with him.

Jeanne Mas decided to return to France with her demos in hand because the milieu of Italian popular music hardly suited her. She tried to sell her songs to several record companies before one of them accepted her. She in fact signed with Pathe Marconi in 1984. In April, she made her first television appearance as a singer with the song "Toute Première fois" It was an instant success: she sold about 900,000 copies of the single which was played on the radio all the way until December.

French people discovered a young woman on their TV screen entirely dressed in black, with jet-black hair, an emaciated face, and very pronounced make-up: a bland version of the punk look. Stimulating choreography with jerky gestures reinforced the image of a woman "who wants some action", almost aggressive. It is without a doubt this image that would seduce the young public. The press, the radio, the television and even the discos grabbed hold of this phenomenon.

At the beginning of the following year, she successively released a second single "Johnny Johnny" followed by an album simply called "Jeanne Mas". For this first go in the big leagues, she asked Daniel Balavoine for help. He produced two of the songs for the occasion.

Another single "Coeur en stereo" was a hit in its own turn. In October, she played the Olympia club in Paris for the first time for four triumphant concerts. A few weeks later, she won the trophy for Revelation of the year and best female artist of the year during the first Victoires de la musique.

Made strong by this success, ravaging and full of energy, she locked herself in a studio in Denmark to record her next album. Heavily into her work, she already started writing her own lyrics. Jeanne Mas had a critical look on music and knew what she wanted. This is why she refused a song written by Musumara which would become "Comme un ouragan" interpreted by the gloss and glitter Princess Stephanie of Monaco. At the beginning of 1986, it took almost a week for "Femmes d'aujourd'hui" (the name of Jeanne's opus) to sell 100,000 copies, numbers that would in fact be multiplied by ten. The single from the album "En rouge et noir" quickly became a hit. In June, the album and the single were number one on the French charts. In the autumn, she played for seven days at the Palais des Sports in Paris and continued with forty concert dates in the rest of France.

This tour started up again in March 1987 for twenty dates, one of which was a concert in Lyon where a live record and a ninety-minute film were made. She then decided to take a break and take advantage of this time to return to Italy to have a baby, a little girl named Victoria. 1988 allowed her to look closely at her career, her artistic doubts. In September she got involved publicly for a subject that she held close to her heart, crimes against children. She wrote a letter to the French President. She suggested that he increase the sentences given to murderers. But detractors took her at her word and criticised her for wanting to reinstate the death penalty.

Despite this incident, Jeanne nevertheless didn't stay inactive and got back to work quickly with Piero Calabrese. She went into a studio for three months and chose the best musicians for the recording: Manu Katche on drums, Steve Shehan on (drums) percussions, Tony Levin on bass and David Rhodes on guitar. In February 1989 a new album titled "Les crises de l'âme " was released. The lyrics seemed more committed with songs like "J'accuse", "Tango" or still "Y'a des bons" which denounced violence in the world. The latter song was in fact the first track on the album and Jeanne would make the video clip. In September, she played at Bercy for four nights that she wished would be unforgettable) Choreography, lights, nothing was forgotten. Unfortunately, the show didn't meet with the expected success and the tour that was scheduled to follow was cancelled.

Far from letting herself be beaten, the singer gathered her team to write a new album at the beginning of 1990. Recorded between Paris and Los Angeles, "L'Art des femmes" came out in October. She re-did the beautiful "Tous les cris, les SOS" by Balavoine. But her record company EMI invested a lot in the promotion of the first single, "Shakespeare", trying to straighten things up. But this had little effect. This album wouldn't reach 100,000 records sold. A year later, EMI put a compilation "Depuis la toute première fois" on the market.

In 1992, Jeanne Mas gave birth to a little boy named Christopher. "Au nom des rois" was the new album which came out on AB Productions in September, her collaboration with EMI having ended. The first track of the album was "Au nom des rois" of which the video clip was once again directed by the singer. Followed by "Dors bien Margot". In September 1993, she played three nights at Casino de Paris and followed with a thirty-five-date tour. Her fans were present but overall it seemed that the singer had lost some of her aura. Some mentioned a certain competition with Mylène Farmer who supposedly stole the spotlight from Jeanne. Jeanne didn't "believe" anymore. It was for this reason that she withdrew from public life for a while and settled in the South of France.

She came back in 1997 with a new album on Arcade records. Jeanne recorded "Jeanne et les Egoïstes" in Toulouse which had 14 songs that she wrote herself, more like rock so as to return to her first love. Aware that she could disappoint the public, she still shows a new serenity on her face. One of the songs was called "Je me suis battue pour être fiere" (I fought hard to be proud) and you believed it. Unfortunately the record went practically unnoticed.

After this comeback, Jeanne Mas, still interested in cinema, took some screenwriting courses in Paris. She even did a short film. All the same she wrote songs without being sure to want to make a record, her former experiences having taught her a lesson. It was the record company XIII Bis that enabled her to release a record in 2000. "Desir d'insolence" is therefore her seventh album. Among all of the songs, three have texts by the poets Paul Verlaine, Alfred de Vigny and Guillaume Appolinaire's "le Pont Mirabeau".

In 2003, Jeanne Mas returned to the forefront of the French music scene with a new album entitled "Les Amants de Castille." The album, inspired by the 17th-century French dramatist Pierre Corneille's play "Le Cid", was written in collaboration with the Italian songwriter Piero Calabrese (who also produced and arranged the album).

2004 and 2005 were primarily remix years for Jeanne Mas. A remix of her hit  "Toute première fois" was released to coincide with the 20th anniversary of her career and swiftly followed by a techno-dance reworking of "Johnny Johnny."

Meanwhile, Jeanne and her two children headed off to live in the U.S. in 2005, basing themselves in Santa Monica, California, where the singer started her life again from zero.

In May 2007, Jeanne Mas released a new album in France. "The Missing Flowers" (produced by DJ Esteban and dedicated to a recently deceased friend, Josyane Lair) struck out in a very different direction from the singer's previous albums. In fact, the album revolved around a colourful mix of dance and techno tracks suited to club dancefloors. "Sur un air d'Argentine" was chosen as the first single release from the album.

A year on from "The Missing Flowers", Jeanne Mas returned to the studio to work on another album entitled "Be West." Released in May 2008, and heavily influenced - as its title suggests - by country & western music and folk, the album proves that the singer has been busy soaking up the cultural influences of her new home in Phoenix, Arizona.

Jeanne Mas returned to Paris to perform at Le Trianon (25 - 28 June 2008).

June 2008