Lin-Manuel Miranda was born in New York, NY in 1981 to parents Luis Miranda and Luz Towns-Miranda, a political consultant and a psychologist respectively, both of whom were born in Puerto Rico. He attended Hunter College Elementary and High School, a specialized public high school in Manhattan, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. He saw his first Broadway musical, Les Misérables, at the age of seven; growing up, he adored both musical theatre and hip-hop, and was deeply involved with his school's theater program.
While he was a student at Wesleyan University, Miranda began working on In the Heights, which would become his first success as a composer/lyricist. Written in...