Lily Allen (born 2 May 1985) is an English recording artist, talk show host, and actress. She is the daughter of actor and musician Keith Allen and film producer Alison Owen. In her teenage years, her musical tastes evolved from glam rock to alternative. She ran away from home to attend the Glastonbury Festival at the age of fourteen. A year later, Lily Allen abandoned school and concentrated on improving her performing and compositional skills. Afterwards, she created several demo songs, and near the end of 2005, she created a profile on MySpace, where she made some of her recordings public. A contract was signed with the label Regal Recordings, as the views on MySpace rose to tens of thousands. In 2006, Lily Allen began to work on completing what would be her first studio album and its first mainstream single "Smile" reached the top position on the UK Singles Chart in July 2006.

Allen and Amy Winehouse have been credited with starting a process that led to the media-proclaimed "year of the women" in 2009 that has seen five female artists making music of "experimentalism and fearlessness" long nominated for the Mercury Prize. In September 2009, Lily Allen stated that she sees no way that she could ever make a profit making new records. She said that she has no plans to make another album and she is not renewing her record contract. Allen intends to take a two year break from performing starting in March 2010 to launch a record label and open a fashion rental shop.