Her first gig was singing the US national anthem at a high-school basketball game, and the crowd went wild. Nowadays Lauryn Hill is probably the best known of the many brilliant women who play hip-hop, though modestly she says of herself: "I'm just a vehicle through which this thing moves."
While still in high school she started acting, as a troubled runaway in an American soap, As The World Turns; she was also in Sister Act 2, and then came the band, the Fugees (short for Refugees). She was a year into college at Columbia University when the Fugees' second album, The Score, took off.
Although the Fugees were still soaring, Hill was anxious to make a solo album - the result was The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, released last year. Both critically and commercially the album has been a phenomenal success, described by a peer as "the first gunshot of hip-hop art the world is gonna get".
Hill has said in interviews that the source of some songs on the album is the painful experience of "dysfunctional" relationships before her current partner.
Hill is now engaged to Rohan Marley, son of reggae icon Bob. (Some of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill was recorded at the Marley Music studios in Jamaica, and the album's cover art is reminiscent of 1973's Burnin' by Bob Marley's group, the Wailers. The Jamaican influence is clearly huge.)
She and Rohan have two children, one-year-old Zion (the inspiration for one of the most beautiful songs on her album) and six-month-old Selah.
Lauryn Hill is kept busy. She has her own production company - she looks forward to the chance to fulfil another ambition and produce black science-fiction films. And she is the founder of The Refugee Project, an organisation set up to encourage social activism among urban youth.
Meanwhile, she has been busy gigging anywhere in the world where hip hop is listened to.
"It's a huge thing", she has said. "It's not segregated anymore. It's not just in the Bronx, it's all over the world. That's why I think it's more crucial now that we, as artists, take advantage of our platform."
