Songfacts®:

• This song is a duet between two superstar divas: Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. The song's message is that when you have faith and believe, miracles can happen. It doesn't specifically mention God, but that can be implied by its use in the movie The Prince Of Egypt, which is based on a story told in the bible.
• "When You Believe" is the main theme of the 1998 DreamWorks movie The Prince Of Egypt. It was written by the song's producer, Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds, along with Stephen Schwartz, who has been the lyricist for several movies, including Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1996) and Enchanted (2007). The Prince Of Egypt was the first movie he contributed toward composing as well as the lyrics.
• In the film, this song was performed by Michelle Pfeiffer and Sally Dworsky (dubbing for Sandra Bullock) as their characters Tzipporah, wife of Moses and Miriam, respectively. The song appears at the film's climax just before the parting of the Red Sea.
  
  This version of the song was produced by Hans Zimmer, who composed the score for the film. It also appears on the soundtrack along with the Whitney/Mariah version.
• According to Babyface, there was tension between Carey and Houston, so they ended up recording separately.
  
  "They both asked for me and neither of them were going to do it from what I understand unless I was the producer," Babyface shared with Vulture. "Mariah's producer was Walter Afanasieff at the time and did most of her stuff and Whitney's was David Foster. So neither one of them trusted those producers; Whitney wouldn't have trusted Walter and Mariah wouldn't have trusted David."
• This was a global hit, placing high on the charts in many countries and helping The Prince Of Egypt soundtrack sell over a million copies in America. Whitney Houston was a soundtrack superstar in the '90s, contributing hits to Waiting To Exhale (1995), The Preacher's Wife (1996), and most famously, The Bodyguard (1992), where she sang what became her signature song, "I Will Always Love You."
• "When You Believe" won the Oscar for Best Original Song, beating out "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing," a #1 hit for Aerosmith from the movie Armageddon.
• A few weeks after this song appeared on The Prince Of Egypt soundtrack, it was included on Whitney Houston's My Love Is Your Love (her first non-soundtrack album since 1990) and on Mariah Carey's compilation Number 1's.
• In 2007 Leon Jackson, the fourth winner of the British talent show The X Factor, recorded this song as his debut single. It was released a few days after he was announced as the winner. The song's co-writer Stephen Schwartz tweaked the lyrics for Jackson's version.
  
  Jackson listed the song as a bonus track on his debut album, Right Now. He explained to the Daily Record October 10, 2008: "I didn't include it on the album proper because it was then and this is now. It was made for four people who could have been the winner of X Factor and I did the best I could with it."