Cindy Herron
Cindy Herron went from Miss Black California to En Vogue's lead on Hold On. The group's charts, RIAA records, Grammy nominations, films, and tours to 2026.
Photo: Sister Circle, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized and converted to WebP.
Miss Black California and the 1988 Auditions
Cindy Herron was born in San Francisco on September 26. The reference works collected by Encyclopedia.com agree on the place and the day but not on the year: two entries give 1965 and a third gives about 1966. This article leaves the year out until a primary record settles it. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she lived with each of them in turn. She told Upscale magazine that seeing the Jackson Five as a child made her think, "Kids can do it too."
By the late 1980s she had won the title of Miss Black California and worked in stage productions in San Francisco. Then the producers Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy, who were making an album for Atlantic Records called FM2, held open auditions for a female vocal group. Four finalists made it: Herron, Maxine Jones, Terry Ellis, and Dawn Robinson. One of the reference entries dates the group's formation to July 18, 1988. Herron had already crossed paths with two of them, meeting Jones in a San Francisco stage production and Ellis at an audition in Houston.
The group first appeared on two FM2 tracks under the name Vogue. When they learned that another act owned that name, they became En Vogue.
"Hold On" and Born to Sing
En Vogue's first single, "Hold On," had Herron on lead. It entered the Billboard Hot 100 on May 5, 1990, and reached No. 2 in July. The RIAA certified it on June 18, 1990, and certified the album Born to Sing on October 22 of that year.
Herron told Albumism in 2017 that she had no set expectations for the debut: "For the very first single to take off and go platinum, we were really playing catchup to that album for a whole year." Asked to pick her own best vocal from the catalog, she chose the same song: "That was my first big lead I sang on and it was always so fun to hear on the radio."
Funky Divas and the Singles of 1992
The second album, Funky Divas, kept the chart run going. "My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)" peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100 in May 1992, and "Free Your Mind" reached No. 8 that October. The RIAA certified "My Lovin'" on May 13, 1992, "Giving Him Something He Can Feel" on August 20, "Free Your Mind" on December 10, and the album itself on March 24, 1993.
En Vogue did not have a single lead singer. Ellis described the split to Seventeen: "We all sing lead. Dawn's sound is funky, Maxine's is sort of sultry/gospel, and Cindy's is more jazz-oriented." In 1994 the group featured on Salt-N-Pepa's "Whatta Man," which peaked at No. 3. Their last top-10 hit came with "Don't Let Go (Love)," which entered the chart in November 1996, reached No. 2 in January 1997, and was certified by the RIAA on January 14, 1997. The album EV3 and its single "Whatever" were both certified on August 26, 1997.
Billboard's chart history for En Vogue lists 14 songs on the Hot 100. Six of them reached the top 10, and none reached No. 1.
Seven Grammy Nominations Between 1991 and 1997
The Recording Academy lists seven Grammy nominations for Herron, all as a member of En Vogue, and no wins. The first came at the 1991 ceremony for Born to Sing. The 1993 ceremony brought three: for the Funky Divas album, for "Free Your Mind" in a rock performance category, and for the "Free Your Mind" video. The group was nominated again in 1994 for "Give It Up, Turn It Loose," in 1995 for "Whatta Man" with Salt-N-Pepa, and in 1997 for "Don't Let Go (Love)."
Juice and Other Screen Roles
While En Vogue was at its commercial peak, Herron also took film work. She played Yolanda in Juice, the 1992 film, a role Encyclopedia.com's entry on the group mentions and Rotten Tomatoes lists among her credits. Rotten Tomatoes, where she is billed as Cindy Herron Braggs, also credits her in the title role of Lexie (2003), as Mrs. Hamilton in The Next Dance (2014), and as herself in An En Vogue Christmas (2014).
Glenn Braggs and the 2022 Divorce Filing
Herron married the former Major League Baseball outfielder Glenn Braggs in 1993, and they had four children. Black Enterprise reported that she filed for divorce in Los Angeles County Superior Court in April 2022, about 29 years into the marriage, citing irreconcilable differences.
The Masked Singer and the Tours After 2022
The lineup changed over the decades, but Herron and Ellis stayed. In 2002, with Jones and Robinson no longer in the group, they recorded the Christmas album The Gift of Christmas with Amanda Cole. Herron described that period to Albumism: "We wanted to continue performing and doing shows." By 2022 the group was Herron, Ellis, and Rhona Bennett, and that trio appeared in costume on Fox's The Masked Singer in an episode aired on May 5, 2022.
That summer they played 58 shows across the United States and Canada and restarted their Funky Divas Podcast. The same year Billboard listed them on New Kids on the Block's MixTape Tour with Rick Astley and Salt-N-Pepa. In February 2025 En Vogue performed in DJ Cassidy's Pass the Mic Live! halftime show at the NBA All-Star Game, and in March 2026 Billboard reported a joint tour with TLC and Salt-N-Pepa.
No financial publication has estimated Herron's net worth with a method behind it. The numbers online come from celebrity net worth sites and range from $1.5 million to $7 million with no inputs shown, so this article gives no figure. Asked about the group's 30 years, Herron put it this way: "Not everybody can say that, to have such a long career and still love it."
Sources
- En Vogue | Encyclopedia.com
- En Vogue | Biography, Music & News | Billboard
- Gold & Platinum - RIAA
- INTERVIEW: En Vogue’s Cindy Herron, Forever a Funky Diva
- Cindy Herron Grammy Awards and Nominations, Song & Bio
- Cindy Herron Braggs Movies & TV Shows List | Rotten Tomatoes
- En Vogue's Cindy Herron Files For Divorce From Ex-MLB Player Glenn Braggs
- 'En Vogue' Singer Cindy Herron Agrees To No Spousal Support In Divorce
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