page_title: Enya
section_title: Personal life
hierarchical_section_title: Enya / Personal life
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Enya Castle
context_page_description: Eithne Pádraigín Ní Bhraonáin, known professionally as Enya, is an Irish singer, songwriter, record producer and musician. Born into a musical family and raised in the Irish-speaking area of Gweedore in County Donegal, Enya began her music career when she joined her family's Celtic folk band Clannad in 1980 on keyboards and backing vocals. She left in 1982 with their manager and producer Nicky Ryan to pursue a solo career, with Ryan's wife Roma Ryan as her lyricist. Enya developed her sound over the following four years with multitracked vocals and keyboards with elements of new age, Celtic, classical, church, and folk music. She has sung in ten languages.
  Enya's first projects as a solo artist included soundtrack work for The Frog Prince and the 1987 BBC documentary series The Celts, which was released as her debut album, Enya. She signed with Warner Music UK, which granted her artistic freedom and minimal interference from the label. The commercial and critical success of Watermark propelled her to worldwide fame, helped by the international top-10 hit single "Orinoco Flow".
context_section_description: In 1997, Enya bought Manderley Castle, a Victorian Grade A listed castle home in Killiney, County Dublin for £2.5 million at auction. Formerly known as Victoria and Ayesha Castle, she renamed the castle after the house from the book Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. In 2009, during her three-year break from music, Enya purchased a home in southern France.
  Since the 1980s, Enya has attracted the attention of several stalkers. In 1996, an Italian man who was seen in Dublin wearing a photograph of Enya around his neck stabbed himself outside her parents' pub after being ejected from the premises. In May 2005, Enya applied to spend roughly £250,000 on security improvements, covering gaps in the castle's outer wall and installing bollards and iron railings. Despite these improvements, in October 2005, two people broke into her home; one attacked and tied up one of her housekeepers and left with several of Enya's items after she had raised the alarm in her safe room.
  Enya is known for keeping a private lifestyle, saying: "The music is what sells. Not me, or what I stand for ... that's the way I've always wanted it". She is not married and is a surrogate aunt to the Ryans' two daughters. In 1991, she said: "I'm afraid of marriage because I'm afraid someone might want me because of who I am instead of because they loved me ... I wouldn't go rushing into anything unexpected, but I do think a great deal about this". A relationship she had with one man ended in 1997, around the time when she considered taking time out of music to have a family, but found she was putting pressure on herself over the matter and "gone the route I wanted to go". She declares herself as "more spiritual than religious ... I derive from religion what I enjoy."
  In 2006, Enya ranked third in a list of the wealthiest Irish entertainers with an estimated fortune of £75 million, and No. 95 in the Sunday Times Rich List of the richest 250 Irish people. The 2016 edition, which listed its top 50 "Music Millionaires of Britain and Ireland", she emerged as the richest female singer with a fortune of £91 million for a place at No. 28.
  In 2017 a newly discovered species of fish, Leporinus enyae, found in the Orinoco River drainage area, was named after Enya.
caption: Enya's home in Killiney, County Dublin
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "4160", "Image ImageLength": "3120", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image ImageDescription": "sdr", "Image Make": "HUAWEI", "Image Model": "HUAWEI GRA-L09", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GRA-L09C09B200", "Image DateTime": "2016:07:15 17:06:25", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "274", "Image DeviceSettingDescription": "[105, 112, 112, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1030", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5792", "EXIF ExposureTime": "81/250000", "EXIF FNumber": "2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "64", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0210", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2016:07:15 17:06:25", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2016:07:15 17:06:25", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "39863/2000", "EXIF ApertureValue": "2", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "0", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF LightSource": "Daylight", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "119/50", "EXIF SubSecTime": "520996", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "520996", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "520996", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "4160", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "3120", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "906", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Custom", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "28", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF GainControl": "None", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "b08a7f27d6cf5d0e0000000000000000"}