Lena d'Água

Portuguese singer (born 1956)

Helena Maria de Jesus Águas (born 16 June 1956), known professionally as Lena d'Água, is a Portuguese singer.

Lena d'Água was born in Lisbon. In 1973 she enrolled briefly in Sociology but, as the 25 April 1974, Carnation Revolution came to fruition, she left university and joined a theatre group, later majoring in Education. In 1975, Lena d'Água married Ramiro Martins, the bass player of The Beatnicks. The couple had a daughter and, in May of the following year, she joined the band as lead singer, divorcing and leaving the project in 1978. Being the first woman in the country to lead a pop rock band, she became a sex symbol and a pop star; after singing with the Beatnicks and Salada de Frutas she pursued a solo career with her band Atlântida, whose first three solo albums were produced by England's Robin Geoffrey Cable. She sang Billie Holiday and Elis Regina with Portuguese jazz musicians, with whom she would later record a live album singing Portuguese classics from the 70's and 80's at the Hot Clube in 2005. Her album Carrossel was recorded in 2013, with a rock and roll power trio called Rock and Roll Station, with whom she recovered her pop rock hits from the 80s. Her latest album Desalmadamente was released in 2019 and brought her back to original songs, all composed by Pedro da Silva Martins.

Lena d'Água is the daughter of footballer José Águas, who played for Benfica and the Portuguese national team in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2011, d'Água wrote a book about her father, titled José Águas, o meu pai herói (lit. "José Águas, my hero father"). Her younger brother Rui also became a footballer and played for Benfica and Portugal in the 1980s and 1990s. Lena d'Água was a heroin addict for about nine years. She became clean in 1998.