Ananda Lewis, former MTV video jockey, is dead. The news of her passing was shared by her sister, Lakshmi Emory, on Facebook. According to her, Ananda died on June 11, around 11:35 am, while in hospice at her home in Los Angeles at the age of 52. Her cause of death was given as breast cancer.
Lewis came to fame as a VJ with MTV in the late 1990s, hosting various shows including Total Request Live and Hot Zone. After leaving the network, she began her TV talk show, The Ananda Lewis Show. In her final years, she became an advocate for healthy living, raising health awareness among black women.
Here are some facts about Ananda Lewis
1. The early childhood of Ananda Lewis
The former TV host was born on March 21, 1973, in Los Angeles, California. While her father was a computer-animation specialist, her mother worked as an account manager for Pacific Bell. Ananda was raised alongside her older sister, Lakshmi.
When she was 2, the marriage between her parents came to an end in divorce, and she moved with her mom to San Diego, where she was later left in the care of her grandmother for some time while her mother relocated briefly to Europe while trying to deal with the divorce.
2. She started her career as a model
In 1981, Ananda began her career as a model and beauty pageant contestant, competing in the Little Miss San Diego pageant. Even though she was one of the youngest, she still won the contest. This opened doors for her to start working in local and TV productions. It became her motivation to enroll at the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA).
Her initial interest was to become a teacher or psychologist, but her family encouraged her to choose a path that would be more lucrative, such as law. She went to Howard University in Washington D.C., where she majored in History and graduated Cum Laude in 1995. Nonetheless, she did not proceed to law school.
Ananda Lewis had plans to return to school for her master’s when she learned about the audition for the job of on-screen host of BET’s Teen Summit. She auditioned and was selected to become the host. This was surprising for someone who struggled with speech as a child.
In 1996, she got the chance to interview First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton during an installment of the show. After 3 seasons, she was offered the role of a video jockey by MTV.
3. Life after MTV
Lewis, who was once named one of the world’s “50 Most Beautiful People” by People magazine, began the Ananda Lewis Show, which she debuted in 2001. It lasted only a season before it was cancelled, and she moved to work with The Insider as a chief correspondent on celebrity subjects.
She also worked as co-host of the A&E television network show America’s Top Dog and as a spokesperson for the Humane Society.
4. Ananda had a son with Harry Smith
Ananda Lewis had a son, Langston, with Harry Smith, Will Smith’s brother. Although there are reports that Harry Smith was Ananda Lewis’ husband, there was never anything to suggest they were ever married.
What is known is that they were together for 10 years before their relationship finally ended. They had their son in 2011.
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5. Can diagnosis and death
Ananda Lewis revealed that she has battled cancer since 2018. A few years before then, while still breastfeeding her son, she often had mastitis, which went away as soon as she stopped breastfeeding, and so she didn’t give it much thought. However, in December 2018, she felt a lump in her breast while bathing, and she decided to have it checked.
In January 2019, it was diagnosed that she had Invasive carcinoma, a stage 3 cancer. This was not the first time that cancer was lurking close to her, as her mom and cousin both battled the disease. She made an effort at curtailing it by changing her lifestyle and cleaning her system of alcohol and sugar. She also tried to manage stress as best as she could.
She battled the disease, dropping it from 3 to stage 2 in 2020. By 2023, the tumor had grown bigger, but it hadn’t spread to other places. That was until October of that year when she revealed that it had moved wild and she was it was in stage 4.
She continued to fight the disease while also educating women about it until it finally claimed her life in June 2025.
