Ananda Lewis, Former MTV/BET Host, Dead At 52

Ananda Lewis, former MTV VJ and accomplished TV host, has died at age 52 following a battle with breast cancer.

The news was confirmed by her sister, Lakshmi, in a Facebook post shared on Wednesday (June 11).

“She’s free, and in His heavenly arms. Lord, rest her soul,” she wrote along with a black-and-white portrait of Lewis. TMZ reported that Lewis died in hospice in her Los Angeles home.

In 2020, Lewis shared that she’d been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. She hadn’t been getting regular mammograms out of fear of radiation. In October 2024, she told CNN that she didn’t get the doctor-recommended double mastectomy and her cancer had progressed to stage 4.

“My plan at first was to get out excessive toxins in my body. I felt like my body is intelligent, I know that to be true. Our bodies are brilliantly made,” Lewis explained. “I decided to keep my tumor and try to work it out of my body a different way […] I wish I could go back. It’s important for me to admit where I went wrong with this.”

Lewis was born on March 21, 1973, in Los Angeles. Her parents divorced when she was 2, causing her and her sister to be raised by their grandmother in San Diego. She attended an arts high school and graduated from Howard University in 1995. She went on to land a job as host of BET’s Teen Summit.

“That experience got me noticed at MTV and in August of 1997, I moved to New York and started working there,” she told Teen People in an interview. During her MTV tenure, she hosted popular shows including Total Request Live (TRL) and Hot Zone.

Bob Kusbit, MTV’s then-senior vice president for production praised Lewis to The New York Times in 1999. “In the past, our talent was sometimes just pretty people who could read cue cards, but when we brought Ananda to MTV, we decided we were going to do a lot more live television, and I was first and foremost interested in her ability to do live TV.”

The New York Times named her “the hip-hop generation’s reigning It Girl.” She left MTV in 2001 to host her own talk show, The Ananda Lewis Show. It lasted one season. She took a break from television for some years and became a carpenter/contractor. When she briefly returned, she hosted The Insider, a spin-off of Entertainment Tonight as well as A&E’s America’s Top Dog and TLC’s While You Were Out.

Lewis welcomed her son, Langston, with Harry Smith (brother of Will Smith) in 2011.

Back when Lewis spoke with VIBE at the 2023 Strength of a Woman Festival, she applauded our cultural contributions.

“What I love about VIBE is the history. No other magazine that’s new, you can’t go back and get the history. That’s just irreplaceable. You might get the interviews, you might get the shots, but you can’t get the history. The history is built, the history is earned and VIBE has the history. So I think it’s interesting that the competition is greater, but y’all still shine the brightest,” she gushed.

VIBE sends our deepest condolences to all those affected by this loss.