Lenny Henry's heartwarming comments about daughter Billie he shares with ex-wife Dawn French

May 2024 · 3 minute read

The Comic Relief presenter is hosting the Red Nose Day show for the last time in 2024

Comedian Lenny Henry is known for his hilarious stand-up routines and for hosting the , which he has now retired from.

Away from the cameras, Lenny is dad to his daughter Billie, aged 32, who he adopted with his former wife Dawn French.

In a recent interview Lenny, 65, revealed the thoughtful work project he created for his daughter: writing children's books with diverse characters so that Billie, who is mixed race, could identify with them.

The star, who first shot to fame on the talent show New Faces, told Capital XTRA Breakfast while promoting his book : "I never saw any black superheroes. We've got Blade."

Lenny continued: "The Black Panther, The Falcon, Black Lightning, Static, we’ve got a few superheroes, but not very many and we’ve certainly got no leading people of colour in children's books."

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He added about Billie: "She loved The Hobbit and all the CS Lewis books, but she was like, ‘where am I?’. I ended up writing two books for my daughter, they’re about a little girl called Charlie and she had big hair and she had all these adventures, and I guess these books are for my granddaughter when she gets older. I just want my family to see themselves in a book. It's important to me."

Lenny and Dawn married in 1984 in Covent Garden, London, and adopted Billie in 1991 when she was just two weeks old, after struggling to conceive. The couple split in 2010 after 25 years of marriage, and

Lenny is now in a relationship with theatre producer Lisa Makin, whom he met in 2012, and the couple live in Oxfordshire. Dawn meanwhile, is remarried to Mark Bignell, who has two grown-up children of his own, Olly and Lily.

Dawn previously revealed how Billie enjoyed being an only child, opening up to The Telegraph: "I’ve got a daughter who bought a T-shirt for herself when she was about eight that said, ‘I’m an only child, let’s keep it that way.'

"She perfectly well likes her new stepbrother and sister but she has been an only kid for a long time so I have to keep that in mind. She’s had a lot of me to herself."

Dawn and Billie live 12 minutes away from each other, with Dawn telling the publication they have had challenging moments: "We could no longer live together - there would be murder. But we have to live nearby." 

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