By Jessie Pang
HONG&nbsp;KONG&nbsp;(Reuters) -Fans, friends and family of the late&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong-born, American singer and song-writer&nbsp;Coco&nbsp;Lee&nbsp;gathered for&nbsp;her&nbsp;funeral&nbsp;in&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong&nbsp;on Monday, paying respects to the star who died at the age of 48 after a career spanning three decades.
Outside the&nbsp;funeral&nbsp;home in the eastern part of&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong&nbsp;island, nearly one thousand&nbsp;fans, many dressed in black, queued in the summer heat to enter a&nbsp;funeral&nbsp;hall that was opened up to the public after a private service.
"The love you leave behind has become an ocean of stars," read one large banner held by&nbsp;fans&nbsp;with a picture of&nbsp;Lee&nbsp;in a long white dress walking up a flight of pearl stairs.
Angie Zhang, 41, a fan from Shanghai said she had bonded with&nbsp;her&nbsp;future husband at university through&nbsp;Lee's songs.
"We always chose&nbsp;her&nbsp;songs to dance with. She's our connection. We want to accompany&nbsp;her&nbsp;for&nbsp;her&nbsp;last journey. When we heard the news that she passed away, our minds went blank," she said, while holding a wreath of flowers.
Inside the hall, people entered and bowed in front of a coffin surrounded by purple and pink flowers, and a portrait of the singer with the words: "In loving memory of&nbsp;CoCo&nbsp;Lee".
Lee, who had struggled with depression for several years, died in Queen Mary Hospital on July 5 in&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong, after a suicide attempt three days earlier left&nbsp;her&nbsp;in a coma,&nbsp;her&nbsp;two sisters wrote in a Facebook post at the time.
"Although,&nbsp;Coco&nbsp;sought professional help and did&nbsp;her&nbsp;best to fight depression, sadly that demon inside of&nbsp;her&nbsp;took the better of&nbsp;her," the sisters, Carol and Nancy, wrote in the statement.
'SING FREELY IN HEAVEN'
Among&nbsp;Lee's most notable performances were voicing the female warrior Mulan in the Mandarin-language version of Disney's "Mulan" and performing the Oscar-nominated song "A Love Before Time" from the film "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".
"She was the first Asian singer who went to sing on the Oscar stage, this makes us all proud of&nbsp;her," said&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong&nbsp;film star Jackie Chan in a video post.
"I hope you can dance and sing freely in heaven."
Lee&nbsp;was born in&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong&nbsp;in 1975 and was the youngest of three children of a&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong&nbsp;mother&nbsp;and Malaysian father.
Lee&nbsp;was a groundbreaking, ethnically Chinese star who broke onto the international music scene, and became hugely&nbsp;popular in China and Taiwan, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
While she moved to San Francisco in&nbsp;her&nbsp;childhood, she was offered a recording contract in&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong&nbsp;with Capital Artists after high school, prompting&nbsp;her&nbsp;to move back to&nbsp;her&nbsp;home city.
In 1996,&nbsp;Lee&nbsp;signed with Sony Music Entertainment and&nbsp;her&nbsp;debut album, "Coco&nbsp;Lee", became the best-selling album of that year in Asia.
Her&nbsp;popularity grew steadily in Asia and across the Pacific, setting&nbsp;her&nbsp;on a path of new collaborations and English-language songs. Over a nearly 30-year career, she recorded 18 studio albums and appeared in three films, most notably&nbsp;Lee&nbsp;Xin's "Master of Everything".
In 2011,&nbsp;Lee&nbsp;married Bruce Rockowitz, a Canadian businessman who is the former CEO of the&nbsp;Hong&nbsp;Kong&nbsp;supply chain company Li &amp; Fung. He survives&nbsp;her, as do&nbsp;her&nbsp;sisters and two stepdaughters.
(Writing by James Pomfret; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Christina Fincher)

you might like

Coco Lee fans bid farewell to pop diva at her funeral in Hong Kong