CoCo Lee
Jul. 6 —Popular singer, songwriter and actor, Coco Lee has died by suicide, her siblings said Wednesday in a social media post. She was of 48.
Lee’s sisters Carol and Nancy said she had been suffering from depression for “a few years but her condition deteriorated drastically over the last few months.”
“Although, CoCo sought professional help and did her best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of her took the better of her,” the statement read.
“On 2 July, she committed suicide at home and was sent to the hospital. Despite the best efforts of the hospital team to rescue and treat her from her coma, she finally passed away on 5 July, 2023,” the statement added.
A post shared by Nancy Si Lin Lee (@nancy_yauyetei)
Lee was born in Hong Kong, but raised in San Francisco. After high school, she went back to the city of her birth for a vacation, where she entered a singing contest. Lee hoped to do nothing more than win pay for banging up her mother’s car in an accident. She won first prize in the contest, and that set the wheels turning on her pop career, the CNN reported.
The singer voiced the lead character in the Mandarin version of Disney’s hit film Milan. She also performed a song from the soundtrack of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at the 2001 Oscars.
She married Bruce Rockowitz, a Canadian businessman who is the former chief executive of Hong Kong supply chain company Li & Fung, in 2011. She had two stepdaughters from her marriage with Rockowitz.
In her final Instagram post, Lee shared tattoos reading “love” and “faith” scrawled on her arms.
“My 2 favorite words that I carry strongly in my heart which I desperately needed to get thru this incredibly difficult year,” she wrote in the post, published on the final day of 2022.
“Not only did she bring us joy with her songs and dances in the past 29 years, but she also worked hard to break new ground for Chinese singers in the international music scene and has been doing her utmost to shine for the Chinese,” Lee’s sisters wrote.
“Although CoCo stays in the world for not long a time, her rays of light will last forever!” the statement read.
