HOWARD ASHMAN (Lyricist) wrote the lyrics for the Disney animated films The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin (three songs), and he served as producer on The Little Mermaid and Executive Producer on Beauty and the Beast. With composer Alan Menken, he received two Academy Awards® and two Golden Globe® Awards for Best Song ("Beauty and the Beast" and "Under the Sea") and four Grammy Awards®. He received an Academy Award nomination with Menken for "Friend Like Me," from Aladdin. As author, lyricist, and director of the stage musical Little Shop of Horrors, which ran for five years in New York and has been produced worldwide, Ashman received two Outer Critics' Circle Awards, a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, a London Evening Standard Award, and a Drama Desk Award. For his screenplay version of Little Shop of Horrors, he received a nomination from the Screen Writers Guild, and the song "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space" was nominated (with Menken) for an Academy Award for Best Song. Ashman was author, lyricist, and director of Smile, for which he received a Tony® nomination for Best Book. His other credits include: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and The Confirmation (his only full- length play). He was Artistic Director of the WPA Theatre from 1976 to 1982. Born on May 17, 1950, in Baltimore, Howard Ashman died of complications due to AIDS on March 14, 1991, in New York City.

Beauty and the Beast was dedicated to Howard Ashman
"Who gave a mermaid her voice and a beast his soul..."