Dionne Warwick (born December 12, 1940) is an American singer, actress, activist, United Nations Global Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization, former United States Ambassador of Health, and humanitarian. She is best known for her partnership with songwriters and producers Burt Bacharach and Hal David. According to Billboard magazine, Dionne Warwick is second only to Aretha Franklin as the female vocalist with the most Billboard Hot 100 chart hits during the rock era (1955-1999). Warwick charted a total of 56 hits in the Billboard Hot 100.. The artist scored crossover hits on the Rhythm & Blues charts and the Adult Contemporary charts. Joel Whitburn's tome on the Billboard Hot 100 Charts entitled "Top Pop Singles 1955-1999" ranked Dionne Warwick as the 20th most popular of the top 200 artists of the rock era based upon the Billboard Pop Singles Charts.

Warwick was born Marie Dionne Warrick to parents Mancel Warrick, who began his career as a pullman porter, chef, a gospel record promoter for Chess Records and later a certified public accountant; and Lee Drinkard Warrick, manager of a renowned family gospel group and RCA recording artists The Drinkard Singers in East Orange, New Jersey. Dionne began singing gospel as a child at the New Hope Methodist Church in East Orange. She performed her first gospel solo at the age of six and frequently joined The Drinkard Singers. Warwick's aunt Emily (Cissy) Drinkard Houston and sister, the late Delia (Dee Dee) Warrick also performed with the family group. Other family members include Dionne's brother, Mancel Warrick, Jr., who was killed in an accident in 1968 at the age of eighteen.

Her first televised performances were in the mid-and late 1950s with the Drinkard Singers and were carried on local television stations in New Jersey and New York City. Warwick grew up in a racially mixed middle-class neighborhood. She stated in an interview on The Biography Channel in 2002 that the neighborhood in East Orange "was literally the United Nations of neighborhoods. We had every nationality, every creed, every religion right there on our street." Warwick was untouched by the harsher aspects of racial intolerance and discrimination until her early professional career when she began touring nationally. Warwick graduated from East Orange High School in 1959 and was awarded a Scholarship in Music Education to the Hartt College of Music in Hartford, Connecticut (a school from which she earned her Doctorate of Music Education in the 1973