The singer and songwriter, known worldwide with her hit "Lança Perfume" (1980), died at her Sao Paulo home on Monday night, her family announced Tuesday on social networks. She had been suffering from lung cancer since 2011.

Born in the Brazilian economic capital on December 31, 1947, into the middle class, Rita Lee Jones began singing covers of the Beatles and other Anglo-Saxon artists in the all-female group Teenage Singers.

But it was with the psychedelic rock trio Os Mutantes, formed in 1966, that she became famous at the height of tropicalism, a libertarian movement that revolutionized Brazilian music in the midst of the military dictatorship (1964-1985).

It was alongside Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, leaders of this movement, that Rita Lee discovered her "Brazilian side".

"They gave me advice on how to make Brazilian music. Because before, I only sang foreign songs, other artists," she explained in the documentary "Ovelha Negra" (Black Sheep), released in 2007 and directed by Roberto de Carvalho, her partner in life and music for more than 40 years.

Rita Lee left Os Mutantes in 1972 to join the band Tutti Frutti, before devoting herself primarily to her solo career.

"The only girl in rock"

Rita Lee was a pioneer of the Brazilian music scene. Her extravagant outfits and songs that speak unbridled about love, sex and freedom, have made her a feminist symbol.

"I was the only girl in a group of guys who had the mantra +to rock, you have to have balls+. I had my uterus and my ovaries and I felt like their equal, whether they wanted it or not," she wrote in her 2016 autobiography.

Among his greatest hits, besides "Lança Perfume": "Ovelha Negra" (1975), "Mania de você" (1979) and "Amor e sexo" (2003).

His look was also his trademark: mid-length hair with a radiant complexion (often in red) and glasses with colored lenses.

Rita Lee has attracted the sympathy of artists of all styles, including the father of Bossa Nova, Joao Gilberto, with whom she recorded the duo Joujoux and Balangandans.

"Joao Gilberto taught me that I was a rocker with a Bossa Nova singer path," she said in 2019, after the death of the latter.

In fifty years of career, she has released more than 30 albums, received 7 nominations at the Latin Grammy, winning in 2001 that of best Brazilian rock album, for "3001".

She kept the link with the great rock bands of the 60s for a long time, opening the first Rolling Stones concert in Brazil, in 1995, and launching a record of Bossa Nova version of Beatles covers in 2001.

- "Patron saint"

Rita Lee retired from the stage in 2012, at the age of 64, citing "physical fragility".

Since then, she had been living as a recluse in her country home in the state of São Paulo, alongside her husband and his animals, another of her great passions.

In the latest images shared on her social networks, she appeared short hair, dressed in colorful sweaters.

True to her rebellious soul, she revealed in 2022 to the Brazilian edition of Rolling Stones magazine that the role of national "Queen of Rock" attributed to her by Brazilians of all ages did not quite suit her: "I like to be called +Patron Saint of Freedom+ rather than +Queen of Rock+ which for me is cheesy".

© 2023 AFP