A YouTube cover of Beyoncé's "Pretty Hurts" in 2013 was supposed to be a fun sisters project. Beyoncé disagreed, signing them to Parkwood Entertainment. Chloe x Halle spent the next decade building a following through R&B albums and their Grown-ish run, earning five Grammy nominations. But the real inflection point was Disney casting her as Ariel in the 2023 The Little Mermaid. The announcement triggered a racist backlash campaign. The film answered it with a record opening weekend for a movie with a Black female lead.
After The Little Mermaid, the question was whether she could step out of both the Disney machine and the Chloe x Halle duo. The solo career launched with "Angel" in 2023, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Song. Her debut album Love? Or Something Like It dropped in October 2025. Off-stage, her personal life has been messier. She secretly gave birth to son Halo in December 2023, then announced a breakup with rapper DDG ten months later. By May 2025, she'd obtained a restraining order against him following abuse allegations. None of it slowed her output.
Growing up homeschooled in Mableton, Georgia, she never spent a day in a traditional classroom. She and Chloe taught themselves their instruments through YouTube tutorials, and their father quit his day job to manage the duo full-time. Director Rob Marshall reportedly cried at her Little Mermaid audition after seeing her sing at the 2019 Grammys. She was 18 when she auditioned, 21 when production wrapped, and navigating a racist backlash campaign the entire time. The performance vindicated all of it.