"I think the whole world is dying to hear someone say, 'I love you.' I think that if I can leave the legacy of love and passion in the world, then I think I've done my job in a world that's getting colder and colder by the day."

• Born Lionel Brockman Richie Jr. June 20, 1949, in Tuskegee, Alabama.

• "All Night Long (All Night)," one of Lionel Richie's best-known songs, went to No. 1 and was nominated for Song Of The Year in 1984. That same year, his album Can't Slow Down spent 59 weeks in the Billboard Top 10 and eventually sold more than 10 million copies.

• Richie earned his first career GRAMMY for 1982 for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Male for "Truly." Can't Slow Down won Album Of The Year in 1984, and "We Are The World," a charity single he wrote with Michael Jackson, won Song Of The Year for 1985. He also earned the Producer Of The Year (Non-Classical) GRAMMY for 1984. Richie made his GRAMMY stage debut at the 23rd GRAMMY Awards in 1981, where he performed "Lady" as part of a Song Of The Year medley.

• Richie is an avid gardener, and has said that if he weren't a musician, he would be a landscape architect or interior designer.

• Richie was honored as MusiCares Person of the Year in 2016. The annual Person of the Year gala raises funds for MusiCares, which provides services and resources that cover a wide range of financial, medical and personal emergencies for music people.

• In addition to his work on "We Are The World," which raised more than $63 million for famine relief in Africa, Richie has raised more than $3.1 million for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.