Rita

Rita was born in 1962 in Tehran

Rita Jahan-Farouz was born in Tehran in 1962 to a family of Persian Jews. Her father Shmuel was a teacher and her mother Sharona was a hairdresser. In 1970 the family moved to Israel and settled in Ramat HaSharon, where she grew up and finished Rothberg High School.

In 1980 she joined the IDF band Tzahal 80, alongside Rami Kleinstein. In 1982 she began studying at the Beit Zvi acting school. Her first single came out in late 1985, and her debut album Rita followed in 1986.

She was named Singer of the Year by Israel's national radio in 1988 and 1989, and sang for Israel at Eurovision in 1990, placing 18th. She voiced Pocahontas in the Hebrew version of the Disney film and played Roxie Hart in Chicago in 2004. She married Kleinstein in 1988, they have two daughters, and they announced their separation in 2007.

From 2011 she released songs in Persian, which gained her a following in Iran, where her music is banned. She published her first novel in 2021 and supported the Mahsa Amini protests in 2022. She lit a torch at the Independence Day ceremony in 2022 and acted in the 2025 film Reading Lolita in Tehran.