Cecelia "CeCe" Peniston is a former beauty queen who became club royalty when she released her dancefloor classic "
Finally" in 1991. After singing backing vocals for rapper Tonya "Overweight Pooch" Davis' debut album, Peniston was offered a one-single deal of her own. Based on a lovelorn poem she wrote in college about finding the man of her dreams, "Finally" was the first song she ever wrote and it made her an instant star. The single went to #1 on the Dance Club Songs chart, prompting A&M to extend her contract. Her debut album, also titled
Finally, proved she wasn't a one-hit wonder with the chart-topping dance singles "We Got A Love Thang" and "Keep On Walkin'." In the meantime "Finally" continued to dominate the charts and crossed over to the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at #5 in 1992.
Peniston was born in Dayton, Ohio, but grew up in Arizona. She was playing gigs around the Phoenix area when she befriended producer Felipe "DJ Wax Dawg" Delgado, who got her into the studio singing backing vocals for other artists, including Overweight Pooch. Delgado helped Peniston adapt her "Finally" poem into a song and produced a number of tracks on her debut album.
While Peniston found fame as a dance singer, she really has the heart of an R&B artist and the vocal chops to prove it, as she did with the Top 10 R&B ballad "Inside That I Cried" from Finally. She wanted to move further in that direction with her sophomore album, Thought 'Ya Knew (1994), as well as show off her ability to handle other genres like jazz, funk, gospel, and even reggae, while still retaining the dance vibe that made her famous. For the R&B element, she enlisted "The Way Love Goes" singer Brian McKnight, who provided backing vocals and wrote and produced the track "Forever In My Heart." The single "I'm In The Mood," an amalgamation of jazz, R&B, new jack swing, and dance-pop, pulled double duty on the Dance and R&B charts, going to #1 on the former and #7 on the latter.
Peniston found the man she dreamed of in "Finally" while she was recording her debut album. In 1992 she married Malik Byrd, who cowrote "Inside That I Cried" and appeared in the song's video, but the strain of maintaining a long-distance relationship while she was on the road drove them apart and they divorced a year later. From 2003 to 2011, she was married to Frank Martin, a realtor from Massachusetts.
Before she was a famous singer, Peniston's good looks and personality helped her succeed in beauty pageants. She was crowned Miss Black Arizona in 1989 and Miss Galaxy in 1990. But the skinny-obsessed diet culture of the '90s was already taking hold in the music industry when Peniston, who struggled with her weight, started her music career a short time later.
"When I first got in this business, people were actually erupting in fits of laughter when I introduced myself," she told 5 Chicago Magazine in 2006, "but I was comfortable with who I was, but that was an issue for the record company."
She went on to say that up-and-comers, however, should take care of their looks "because people see the physical first." In 2009, Peniston underwent liposuction to lose weight.
In 1994, Peniston made history as the first foreign female entertainer to perform in post-apartheid South Africa, beating Whitney Houston to the punch by two months. Five months after Nelson Mandela became the country's president, Peniston sang in front of a crowd of 3,000 in Johannesburg. "When I went over there it was like, 'Oh, my God, I'm in the motherland. Where everything started. It's our history," she
recalled to The Huffington Post in 2017.
Michael Jackson invited Peniston to perform at his United We Stand: What More Can I Give benefit concert in honor of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The special, which aired on ABC in November 2001, featured a star-studded roster of performers, including Janet Jackson, Al Green, Carole King, James Brown, Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart, the Backstreet Boys, and Aerosmith, among others. Peniston performed her ubiquitous hit "Finally."
In 2005, Peniston competed on the NBC reality series
Hit Me, Baby, One More Time, which had former pop stars singing their biggest hit, along with a cover of a contemporary song, in front of a studio audience that would decide the winner (the $20,000 prize went to charity). Facing off against Loverboy, A Flock Of Seagulls, Arrested Development, and Tiffany, Peniston sang "Finally" and a cover of Faith Hill's "
There You'll Be." The hip-hop group Arrested Development ended up winning with their own "
Tennessee" and a rendition of the Los Lonely Boys' "
Heaven."
From 2015 to 2016, Peniston dated personal trainer Marcus Matthews. The couple appeared together on a 2015 episode of the reality series Celebrity Wife Swap, where Peniston traded places with Family Matters actress Kellie Williams. Peniston, who was used to having a personal trainer and private chef, struggled with Williams' lifestyle as a stay-at-home mom who does all of the cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing with little time for herself. On the flipside, Williams suffered through the singer's rigid diet and exercise routine (Peniston was training for a bikini competition at the time).
Peniston performed for President Bill Clinton at both of his inauguration ceremonies in 1993 and 1997. She got the initial gig through Hillary Clinton after the soon-to-be First Lady heard her sing at a rally, and the Clintons requested her for several other events. Peniston was comfortable enough with the president that she called him by his first name while they were posing for pictures, which infuriated her mother.
"She was like, 'You call him President Clinton. You don't be calling him Bill,'" Peniston
told the Just Give Me Five podcast in 2025.
Peniston was a member of the short-lived gospel group Sisters Of Glory, along with Thelma Houston, Phoebe Snow, Lois Walden, and Albertina Walker. Walden, a cabaret singer, put the quintet together as part of a limited series of concerts to benefit charity in 1994 but their unexpected popularity kept them going. They were invited to perform at Woodstock '94 and sing for Pope John Paul II for a Christmas concert at the Vatican in Rome. Before they knew it, the Sisters had a record deal and issued their sole album, Good News In Hard Times, in 1995 before disbanding.
Early in her career, Peniston toured with Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. The hip-hop group, led by Mark Wahlberg, had a #1 hit in 1991 with "
Good Vibrations" around the time "Finally" first hit the charts. Peniston has fond memories of the group and their shenanigans, even when she was the target of their pranks, like when they sent pull-back toy cars across the stage while she was performing.
Peniston was invited to sing at one of Aretha Franklin's private birthday parties in Detroit. She calls the gig one of the most surreal moments of her career, especially when Aretha started dancing while she and Tito Puente performed "I'm Not Over You," the second single from Thought 'Ya Knew.
