Beni Arashiro was born in Kanagawa Prefecture on March 30, 1986 to a Japanese mother from Okinawa and an American father, and spent much of her early life traveling back and forth between Japan and the United States. From the age of 12, she attended an American high school in Japan. Arashiro got her break in 2002 when she went through to the finals of one of Japan’s biggest beauty and talent contests, Kokuminteki Bishojo Contest (All Japan National Beauty Contest), the same competition that launched 12-year-old Aya Ueto into an unsuspecting public in 1997.
Arashiro became the first singer to break solo from the pop idol group Bishojo Club 31, a multi-member all-girl group in the Morning Musume vein, to pursue a solo career in 2004. Since her debut, she has scored several chart hits in Japan despite minimalist promotion. Her debut solo single, Harmony, entered the top 30 on the Oricon chart in June 2004 and showed Arashiro's fondness for the same pop/R&B style as one of Japan's biggest-selling stars, Utada Hikaru.
Arashiro went on to release three more singles before her debut album, titled Beni, was released in February 2005 and entered the top 20. With lyrics sung in both English and Japanese and music in a mixture of styles, from the predictable R&B, pop balladry, to the less predictable, such as gospel in the form of a cover of Oh Happy Day that was more Broadway than Harlem. In addition to her recording career, like many J-pop singers Arashiro has also done her fair share of promotional tie-ups with well-known brands, including Kose Visee (makeup) and Jockey (apparel). She capped 2005 by winning the "New Artist of the Year" gong at the Japanese music industry's 19th Japan Gold Disc Awards.
Arashiro's second album, Girl 2 Lady, was released in February 2006 and saw a more pronounced shift toward the American R&B style of one of her favourite singers, Janet Jackson. Shortly after the release, Arashiro took the lead role in the Japanese production of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical, The Beautiful Game, and appeared on the public network NHK's English-learning program, “Shinkankaku Keyword de Eikaiwa.”
In February 2007, Arashiro scored a minor hit with the ballad Luna, taken from her third album, Gem, which came out two months later.
For almost a complete year, Arashiro didn’t release anything new and was instead working on other projects involving television and fashion. In March 2008, her label, Avex, released a best-of, Chapter One ~Complete Collection~, which contained not only her most successful songs, but also a small number of new tracks. This was the last CD she released on Avex because shortly after the CD's release she switched to Nayutawave Records, which is a part of Universal Music Japan. She also changed her name to simply BENI, all in capital letters.
As BENI, her first release was a collaboration with rapper Dohzi-T in June which instantly became a big success. The song Mou ichidou... (Dohzi-T feat. BENI) was released as a ringtone at first, and was downloaded over 2 million times. Later, the song was released on single and had successful sales as well. BENI’s answer to the song was the single Mou nido to..., which was released in December. Although this single didn’t sell quite as well as Mou ichidou…, it showed that the collaboration with Dohzi-T had given her career a huge boost as it ranked 20th on the Oricon Charts, something BENI had not achieved for quite some time, seeing as most of her releases barely charted above eighty on the Oricon Charts since 2005.
In 2009, she released four singles and an album. The first single Kiss Kiss Kiss reached number one in sales on the RIAJ Digital Track Chart for a week. The next two singles were used for commercials; Koi kogarete for the clothing brand Forever 21 and With U on the Zutto futari de single for a beer commercial. BENI's album Bitter&Sweet reached number five on the Oricon charts, making it her most successful release thus far.
The following year continued in the same fashion with releases being used as a theme song such as bye bye used for the television series "Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ." It was also announced that BENI will be one of California-based Anime Expo's musical guests.
It seems that the label switch has given BENI interesting new opportunities and has also given her the chance to give her slumbering music career a lift. We’re curious to see how she will progress further and eagerly look forward to her future activities.
