Eunice Waymon was born in Tryon, North-Carolina on February 21, 1933, as the sixth of seven children in a poor family. 
The child prodigy played piano at the age of four. 
With the help of her music teacher, who set up the "Eunice Waymon Fund", she could continue her general and musical education. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York. 
To support her family financially she started working as an accompanist. In the summer of 1954 she took a job in an Irish bar, Atlantic City, New Jersey. 
The bar owner told her she had to sing as well. 
Without having time to realize what was happening, Eunice Waymon, who was trained to become a classical pianist, stepped into show business. She changed her name into Nina ("little one") Simone ("from the French actress Simone Signoret"). 

In the late 50s Nina Simone recorded her first albums (Jazz as played in an exclusive side street club, And Her Friends) which are still remarkable displays of her talents as a pianist, a singer and a composer. Songs as "Plain Gold Ring", "Don't Smoke in Bed" and "Little Girl Blue" soon became standards in her repertoire. 
One song, "I Loves You Porgy" (from Porgy and Bess), became a hit and the nightclub-singer became a star, performing at Town Hall (At Town Hall), Carnegie Hall (At Carnegie Hall) and at jazz festivals (At Newport) with a repertoire ranging from gospel music (The Amazing Nina Simone, At the Village Gate) to African music (At Newport, At the Village Gate), from blues to Ellington songs (Sings Duke Ellington), from classical music (At Carnegie Hall) to folk songs of diverse origin (Folksy Nina). Using Bachian counterpoint, the improvisational approach of jazz and the modulations of the blues, her talent could no long be ignored. 

When four black children were killed in the bombing of a church in Birminghan in 1963, Nina wrote "Mississippi Goddam" (In Concert), a bitter and furious accusation of the situation of the Black People in the USA. Her strong emotional approach would become a characteristic in her art. She uses her voice with his remarkable timbre and her careful piano playing as means to achieve her artistic aim: to express love, hate, sorrow, joy and loneliness through music in a very direct way. 
Other characteristics of the Nina Simone art are: her original timing, the way she uses silence as a musical element and her often understated live act, sitting at the piano and advancing the mood and the climate of her songs by a few chords. 

Sometimes her voice changes from dark and raw to soft and sweet. She pauses, shouts, repeats, whispers and moans. Sometimes piano, voice and gestures seem to be separate elements, then, at once, they meet. 
Add to this the way she "puts her spell" on an audience, and you have some of the elements that make Nina Simone into a unique artist. 
One moment, she is the actress who turns a Brecht-Weill song as "Pirate Jenny" (In Concert) into great theatre, then, after a set of protest songs, she will sing "Ne Me Quitte Pas" (I Put a Spell on You) in French. 

Although Nina was called the "High Priestess of Soul" by her fans and was regarded by them as an almost religious figure, she was often misunderstood as well. When she wrote "Four Women" (Wild is the Wind) in 1966--a bitter lament of four negro women whose circumstances and outlook are related to subtle gradations in skin colour--the song was banned on Philadelphia and New York radio stations because "it was insulting to Black People"... 

The High Priestess would walk different paths to find the adequate songs to spread her message. 
She records a blues album (Sings the Blues), including her compositions "Sugar in my Bowl" and "Do I Move You", a haunting "My Man's Gone Now" (again from Porgy and Bess) and "Backlash Blues", a protest song of which the lyrics were written for her by the poet Langston Hughes. 
Her repertoire includes more Civil Rights songs. "Why? The King of Love Is Dead", captures the tragedy of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King on Aprile 4, 1968 ('Nuff Said). "Young, Gifted and Black", inspired by Lorraine Hansberry's play with the same title, became the Black National Anthem. 
At that period she surprises her fans with an album (And Piano!) on which she sings and plays alone. The songs on And Piano! are about reincarnation, death, love and loneliness. 
Her gift to give new and deeper dimensions to songs resulted in remarkable versions of "Ain't Got No/I Got Life" (from Hair, on 'Nuff Said and Black Gold), Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" (To Love Somebody), "To Love Somebody" and other Bee Gees songs ('Nuff Said, To Love Somebody) "My Way" done in a tempo doubled on bongo's (Here Comes the Sun), "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and five other Dylan songs (Let it All Out, To Love Somebody, Here Comes the Sun). On Emergency Ward she set up an atmosphere that left no illusions and no escape by using two George Harrison songs: "My Sweet Lord" and "Isn't It a Pity". 
But Nina tried to escape anyway. She felt she had been manipulated. Disgusted with record companies and show business, she left the USA in 1974 for Barbados, Liberia, Switzerland and Paris. 
She returned to the record world in 1978 with Baltimore, containing the definite rendition of Judy Collins "My Father" and the hypnotizing "Everything Must Change". 

Her next album, Fodder in Her Wings, recorded in 1982 in Paris, is based upon her self-imposed "exile" from the USA: Liberia ("Liberian Calypso"), Switzerland ("There is No Returning"), Trinidad ("I Sing Just to Know That I'm Alive"). More than ever determined to make her own music, Nina wrote and arranged all the songs and sung in English and French. 

In 1984, one of her concerts at Ronnie Scott's in London was filmed, resulting in a captivating video, featuring Paul Robinson on drums. A song from her very first album, "My Baby Just Cares For Me", became a hit. Nina's back was not only the title of a new album; her concerts would take her all over the world again. 
In 1989 she contributed to Pete Townshend's musical The Iron Man. In 1990 she recorded with Maria Bethania; in 1991 with Miriam Makeba. That same year, her long awaited autobiography was published, called I Put A Spell On You. 
In 1993 a new studio album was released. A Single Woman includes several Rod McKuen songs, Nina's own composition "Marry Me", her version of the French standard "Il n'y a Pas d'Amour Heureux" and a very moving "Papa, Can You Hear Me?". No less than five of her songs were used in 1993 motion picture soundtrack of Point of No Return (also called The Assassin, Code Name: Nina). The film One Night Stand (1997) features her song "Exactly Like You". Her music continues to excite new and young listeners: "Ain't Got No-I Got Life" is a 1998 hit in The Netherlands, just like 30 years ago.
 
Together with her regular accompanists Leopoldo Fleming (percussion), Paul Robinson (drums) and her musical director Al Schackman (guitar), she still puts her spell on audiences all over the world. She surprised her fans in Barbican Theatre in London (December 14, 1997) with "Every Time I Feel the Spirit" as a tribute to one of America's first and foremost leaders in the cause of civil rights, peace and brotherhood, singer and actor Paul Robeson (April 9, 1998 is the 100th anniversary of his birth). More spirituals and "blood songs" she never recorded would follow: "Reached Down And Got My Soul", "The Blood Done Change My Name" and "When I See the Blood".
 
The Honorary Doctor in Music and Humanities received the title "Honorary Ambassador of The Ivory Coast". Her Excellency lives in France, but still has a residence in the USA. In December 1998 she will perform in The Ivory Coast.