Maia Estianty

Maia Estianty (born 27 January 1976), formerly known as Maia Ahmad during her marriage to fellow musician Ahmad Dhani, is an Indonesian singer and composer.

Estianty was born in Surabaya, and showed interest in music at an early age, winning a marching band competition while still in elementary school.

She began training as a disc jockey while still in junior high school.

After studying at the University of Indonesia, Estianty joined Dewa 19 as a backing vocalist.

Estianty was born in Surabaya, East Java, on 27 January 1976.

She was the fifth of six children born to Harjono Sigit and his wife Kusthini.

She is the great-granddaughter of Tjokroaminoto, a nationalist Muslim leader and National Hero, through her father's side.

As a child, Estianty often fought with her classmates; in an interview with the weekly entertainment magazine Tabloid Nova, she recalled that, while at Yohanes Gabriel Catholic Elementary School in Surabaya, she once hit a classmate with an object so hard that the classmate began to bleed profusely.

She also took up music during this time, leading her marching band to win a national championship; she also took up the piano.

As a student at State Junior High School 1 in Surabaya, Estianty took up modeling; in 1990 she won the Yess Modelling Competition for Teenagers, which garnered her various offers for modeling.

She also began working part-time at a radio station and learned how to be a disc jockey.

At a birthday party while in junior high school, a friend introduced her to Ahmad Dhani; Estianty and Dhani began writing songs for the piano together.

Having received good marks in elementary school and junior high school, while in senior high school, she began dating, first with a classmate and then with Dhani, which made her student's performance drop drastically.

Towards the end of senior high school, Estianty and her father began arguing about her work and poor performance at school.

Estianty threatened to move out; in response, Sigit said he would support her, on the condition that she continue her studies at a state university.

Estianty enrolled at the University of Indonesia, first in the Dutch literature programme and later in the communications programme.

During this time, she became a backing vocalist for Dhani's band Dewa 19.

The two married in the late 1990s.

In 1999, she and Dhani came up with the idea for the musical duo Ratu.

Estianty played the music, while other women – first Pinkan Mambo, then Mulan Kwok – sang.

Ratu was highly successful.

In 1999, Estianty and Dhani agreed to establish a musical duo consisting of a singer and musician, based on concepts pioneered by international bands like Roxette and Savage Garden.

Pinkan Mambo, a café singer, was chosen to be the second member of the newly formed group, named Ratu, which is "Queen" in Indonesian.

After three years of training, Ratu released its first album, Bersama (Together), in 2003, which was influenced by R&B.

Maia wrote seven songs on the album, while Dhani did the other three.

The album was a commercial success, selling 250,000 copies.

Although Mambo and Estianty began work on another album, Mambo withdrew from the group in 2004 after widespread coverage of her premarital pregnancy.

Maia and Dhani began looking for a replacement.

They agreed on Mulan Jameela, a café singer from Bandung who took the stage name of Mulan Kwok; her appointment was announced on 7 April 2005.

That August, Ratu released the album Ratu and Friends in collaboration with numerous other artists.

The album, which featured two songs by Ratu, sold more than 400,000 copies and was certified double platinum in Indonesia.

The title of the single "Teman Tapi Mesra", often abbreviated TTM and released to promote Ratu and Friends, became widely used to describe those in a physical relationship without an emotional one.

The following year, Maia garnered a role in the Trans TV-funded comedy programme Extravaganza, where she was the only non-Sundanese cast member.

Also in 2006, Ratu released Nomor Satu (Number One), with pop-rock influences; Estianty wrote most of the songs.

The album was a commercial success, selling 200,000 copies nationally on the day of its release, a record for a work by a female Indonesian group.

After the dissolution of the band in 2007 and a bitter divorce in September 2008, Estianty formed Duo Maia with Mey Chan.

She is currently focusing on producing music with her label, Le Moesik.

However, conflict between Dhani and Estianty, as well as concerns over Jameela's payment, led Ratu to disband in 2007.

Estianty with Mey Chan formed Duo Maia.

Together, they released the album, Maia and Friends, in 2008, which was in direct competition with Jameela's album.