45 Interesting Facts About Celine Dion: She is the Second-Highest Earning Musician

French-Canadian singer Celine Dion is popular entertainer and is the second-highest earning musician in history. Here are 45 interesting facts about the popular singer.

1. Celine Dion was born on March 30, 1968, in Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada.

2. Her full name is Celine Marie Claudette Dion.

3. She comes from a large family - she is the youngest of 14 children.

4. Her parents formed a singing group, Dion's Family, and they toured Canada when Celine was still an infant.

5. She is named after the song "Céline," which was released by French singer Hugues Aufray two years before she was born, Dion clearly had no choice but to become a singer herself.

6. Her mother, Thérèse Tanguay Dion (better known as "maman Dion" in Québec), is famous for her culinary talents.

7. Her family owned a piano bar called Le Vieux Baril, where Dion and her siblings would regularly perform.

8. At the age of 12, Celine Dion recorded a demo tape of a song she had written with her mother.

9. They sent the tape to the manager and producer Rene Angelil, who handled the career of popular French singer Ginette Reno.

10. After hearing the tape and inviting Dion to perform for him in person, Angelil signed her immediately under the condition that he would have complete control over her career.

11. Rene Angelil mortgaged his own home to finance her debut album, La Voix du bon Dieu (The Voice of God).

12. The first record album Céline ever bought was Stevie Wonder's "Talking Book" (1972).

13. At age 16, Céline sang "Une colombe" (a well known French song) for Pope John Paul II at the Montreal Olympic Stadium in front of 65,000 people.

14. Celine Dion had recorded nine French albums and won numerous awards by the time she was 18.

15. In 1988, she won the Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin, Ireland, and her performance was broadcast live in countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia and Japan.

16. She recorded her first English language album, Unison, in 1990.

17. She started a restaurant chain in Québec called "Nickels" (1990), later on introduced in Ontario.

18. Dion's real breakthrough into pop music stardom came in 1992, when she recorded the theme to Disney's hit animated feature Beauty and the Beast.

19. In 1993, Dion announced her feelings for her manager by declaring him "the colour of [her] love" in the dedication section of her third English-language album The Colour of My Love. However, instead of criticizing their relationship as Dion had feared, fans embraced the couple.

20. She has promoted the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation since 1982, whose National Celebrity Patron she became in 1993.

21. Eventually, Angélil and Dion married in an extravagant wedding ceremony in December 1994, which was broadcast live on Canadian television.

22. She is three months younger than her stepson, Patrick Angélil.

23. My Heart Will Go On," the love theme for the 1997 blockbuster film "Titanic," is Dion's most popular song.

24. Dion received the National Order of Quebec, her province's highest honor, in April 1998.

25. She sings frequently in English and in French, but she has also sang in Spanish, German and Japanese.

26. She has her own magazine, Celine Dion Magazine.

27. In 2000, she renewed wedding vows with husband René Angelil at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada.

28. In the first months of 2000, Dion announced that she was taking time off from her career in order to focus on her family. She and Angelil had been trying to have children for years, and eventually decided to use in vitro fertilization to conceive.

29. In May 2000, Dion underwent two small operations at a fertility clinic in New York in order to improve her chances of becoming pregnant.

30. She helped raise $1 million for the victims of the 2004 Asian tsunami.

31. In 2004, Dion got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A year earlier, she received a star on the lesser-known Canadian Walk of Fame.

32. She has done numerous duets with the likes of Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Luciano Pavarotti and Aretha Franklin to name a few.

33. In 2009, she received an honorary doctorate in music from the Université Laval in Quebec City.

34. Dion loves singing other people's songs. Some of Dion's most famous covers include Cyndi Lauper's "I Drove All Night,"Eric Carmen's "All by Myself" and John Lennon's "Beautiful Boy."

35. She donated $1 million to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Dion also appeared on Larry King Live and tearfully criticized the U.S. government's slow response in aiding the victims of the hurricane: "There's people still there waiting to be rescued. To me that is not acceptable...How can it be so easy to send planes in another country to kill everybody in a second and destroy lives. We need to serve our country.

36. She endorses a line of eyewear sold in Canada and Europe.

37. She has over 500 pairs of shoes.

38. Her albums have sold over 150 million copies worldwide.

39. She and Madonna share the same French-Canadian heritage through a common ancestor, Zacharie Cloutier.

40. She gave birth to her first child at age 32, son Rene-Charles Angelil, on January 25, 2001.

41. She named her fraternal twin sons "Nelson" and "Eddy", in honor of Nelson Mandela and Eddy Marnay, respectively. They were born on October 23, 2010.

42. Returned to work 5 months after giving birth to her twins Eddy and Nelson in order to begin performing in the United States tour "Céline".

43. On 13 August 2014, Dion announced the indefinite postponement of all her show business activities, including the Celine residency show, and the cancellation of her Asia Tour, in order to take time to take care of her husband. He has throat cancer and underwent the removal of a cancerous tumor in December 2013.

44. On 20 March 2015, Celine Dion announced that she will be returning to The Colosseum at Caesars Palace in late August 2015.

45. Her net worth is $630 million.