Ananda Lewis, best known for her time in the late 1990s and early 2000s as an MTV VJ, died on Wednesday, June 11, TMZ reports. The television personality had revealed, in 2020, that she was living with breast cancer. Lewis was 52 years old.
Lewis was born and raised in Southern California. She attended and graduated from Howard University, in Washington, D.C., in the early 1990s, and she got her start in television as a host of BET’s Teen Summit. For her work on the program, she won an NAACP Image Award in 1997.
Following her success with BET, Lewis moved to MTV and served as a VJ on Total Request Live and Hot Zone. She also won another NAACP Image Award, in 2000, for her work on MTV’s True Life. Profiling Lewis, for The New York Times, in 1999, Douglas Century wrote, “Lewis has emerged as the hip-hop generation’s reigning It Girl, meaning she is not just an MTV personality but a woman whose looks and attitude have made her perpetually in demand at clubs and parties. She is neither singer nor actress, yet from SoHo to South Beach she consorts with stars like Q-Tip, Maxwell, Shaquille O’Neal and Lenny Kravitz.”
Lewis left MTV in the early 2000s and started her own program, The Ananda Lewis Show. She went on to work at CBS, TLC, and elsewhere.