Iijima was born in
Tsuchiura, Ibaraki. Her original demo tape was picked up by
JVC Victor in 1982 and she was signed to the record company as a singer-songwriter. Soon afterward, she was asked to audition for the role of
Lynn Minmay in
The Super Dimension Fortress Macross by the label and the producers chose her to play the role. The series quickly became a mega hit and brought Iijima to stardom. Her debut album,
Rosé, containing no
Macross tracks, had lyrics and music written by her. It was produced by
Ryuichi Sakamoto, who used the new
Yamaha DX7 digital synthesizer (released the same year) while producing her album.
Rosé debuted at number 10 on the charts in September 1983, and she started her career as a singer-songwriter. The couple had two children, Andy and Ryan, before separating in 2001. After releasing her first independent (and first English language) album,
No Limit, she was nominated for the 2000 Los Angeles Music Awards' Best Pop Artist for the album and she was in the final four for the award. She won the best Asian song for her track
Unspoken Love from the album
Wonderful People at the Just Plain Folks Awards in 2006 and performed as a guest performer. In 2006, she reprised her role as Lynn Minmay in
ADV Films' English-language release of
Macross, which made her the second Japanese voice actor to reprise her role in an English anime dub (following only
Miyuki Sawashiro). She dedicated her performance in the ADV dub to
Arihiro Hase, the Japanese voice actor of Hikaru Ichijo in
Macross and a close friend of Iijima. She maintained good relations with Hase's mother after his death by suicide in 1996. Iijima released her twenty-first studio album, called
Echo, in August 2009. The title was taken from the nymph character
Echo that appears in
Echo and Narcissus. The album's theme is unrequited love. She has continued to perform into the 2020s, both live and in videos, but a Tokyo concert planned for August 2020 was postponed to January 11, 2021 (then to August 28, 2021), due to the
COVID-19 crisis. Iijima stated on her website that she "likes the ring of '1.11'" as a sign for the future. ==Discography==