In high school, Hill took up acting and formed a rap group with two of her childhood friends. Hill, Wyclef Jean and Pras would go on to be known as the seminal hip-hop force The Fugees. In 1991, Hill landed a role on "As The World Turns" as a troubled runaway teen. An outstanding and highly movitivated student, she continued to concentrate on her education and received excellent grades. She was also a member of the track and basketball teams as well as the cheerleading squad. Keeping herself in tune with her creative side, Hill also wrote poetry and sang in the school choir. Not suprisingly, this model student was accepted to attend the prestigious Columbia University.

Hill entered Columbia in the fall of 1993 and in early 1994 released the first album with The Fugees, "Blunted on Reality." The album had disappointing sales, due partly to the record company's marketing angle of portraying the group as "alternative." However, the group was enjoying a certain level of underground popularity, particularly with college audiences. It was this hopeful buzz that influenced Hill to drop out of Columbia and go on tour with The Fugees.

In 1996, The Fugees released their sophomore effort, "The Score." The album would become an influential hip-hop favorite, a fresh take on a genre fastly becoming dominated by recycled beats and cliched violent rhetoric, "The Score" took an entirely different turn. The remake of Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly," featuring Hill's voice in an angelic soprano, would become an instant classic. In addition to its historic value, "The Score" was a commercial success as well, eventually selling multi-platinum and earning the group two Grammys. While continuing to tour with the group, Hill appeared in several more small acting roles. She starred in a tv movie about teen pregancy, "Daddy's Girl" (1996), was featured in a hip-hop documentary, "Rhyme & Reason" (1997) and also had a role in a low budget film called "Hav Plenty" (1997).

Amid rumors that Hill's dominant role in The Fugees was causing tension within the group, the members all split to pursue solo careers. Hill, Pras and Wycleff insisted The Fugees were not breaking up and the split was amicable. Pras and Wycleff would go on to have successful solo albums but it was Hill's album "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill" that would be the most memorable individual endeavor to come out of the group. Hill's album went straight to number one and she became the first female artist to sell over 400,000 units in the first week. She was nominated for 10 Grammys and received five, breaking the female record previously held by Carol King for "Tapestry" (1971). Hill wrote all and produced many of the tracks on her album, a soulful and introspective collection which featured both catchy and contagious hits such as "Doo Wop (That Thing)" and personal testimonials such as "To Zion" which she wrote about the birth of her son.

In the wake of her astronomical success, Hill would be aggressively courted by Hollywood. She was negotiating several roles, including a lead in "Charlie's Angels" (2000) and the role of Bob Marley's wife, Rita, in a long-stalled Warner Bros biopic. But Hill was reluctant to commit to the big screen and instead took a two year hiatus from the business where she studied the bible and came in touch with a new spiritual side of herself. She also took time to be with her quickly forming family, marrying her longtime boyfriend, Rohan Marley (son of Reggae legend Bob Marley) and enjoying her three children. She returned to the scene in May 2002 and released a recording of songs from an MTV Unplugged session recorded in July of 2001. The songs are sparse and interrupted by several long speeches by Hill about her life. The album received mixed reviews, with some critics calling Hill's performance erratic and a little too unpolished. But Hill had emerged as a defiant and confident new woman, sighting her spiritual study as a catalyst for realizing how unhappy she had been with all her success. Poised to conquer her next challenge, Hill seemed undaunted by her detractors and aware of the most important thing to her in this stage of her life -- her own happiness.