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Maria Mena was born into an artistic family. Her mother wrote plays and her father Charles was a drummer. Both Mena and her younger brother Tony are named after characters from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story. Her father played in several bands in Oslo, which influenced Mena towards music. When Mena was nine years old, her parents divorced. She suffered from depression and developed an eating disorder.

When Mena was 13 years old, she moved to live with her father. She sang and wrote lyrics as a form of therapy for her feelings and frustrations. Not all the stories in her diary became songs, but "My Lullaby" was one of them, expressing her pain from her parents' divorce. After pleading with her father to make a demo, he got her put up with some of his contacts in the music industry to record Mena's songs. Then he presented his daughter's demo to several record companies. Sony Music signed Mena to their label.

In 2002, she released her debut single "Fragile (Free)" in Norway. It did not chart there. "My Lullaby" was released as the second single and the song reached number five (5) on the Norwegian Singles Chart. It received heavy rotation on NRK P1, P3, P4, Radio 1 and Radio Oslo. The young singer quickly gained fans and soon earned her first platinum record. After its success, she released her debut album Another Phase in Norway, that reached the number six (6) on the Norwegian Albums Chart.

On July 20, 2004, Mena made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, with her first international album White Turns Blue debuting at the top position on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart a week later and at 102 on the Billboard 200. She made a breakthrough into the worldwide singles charts that year with "You're the Only One," a successful song in many countries. The song was the only song that has ever appeared on a Billboard chart, being the U.S. Top 40 Mainstream at 25. "You're the Only One" peaked at 30 on the Dutch Top 40 and 19 on the Dutch Mega Single Top 100. Meanwhile, she has already released her second album in Norway. Mellow was less successful than her 2002 debut, but still managed to peak at 7 in Norway. The second single from both albums was "Just a Little Bit", which was a commercial flop, not managing to chart anywhere.

2005 saw the release of Apparently Unaffected in Norway and several other European countries, fronted by singles "Miss You Love," and "Just Hold Me." A significant success in Norway, the album has earned her three Spellemann nominations, best female artist, best hit and best music video. In the Netherlands, the album was released in June 2006 and charted at 82. It slowly climbed the chart to reach its peak position in its 27th week at 11, as "Just Hold Me" was getting airplay again. "Just Hold Me" was released in May 2006, but then did not chart in the official Dutch Top 40, but did chart in the country's physical singles chart (Mega Single Top 100) at 27. In October 2006, the song started getting heavy airplay again and this time it did managed to reach the official Dutch Top 40 and peaked at 26. In the Mega Single Top 100, it peaked at 7 in the beginning of November 2006. She performed at sold-out concerts in Utrecht and Amsterdam, after the success of "Just Hold Me". The album was at 48 at the Dutch year-end chart, outselling other major artists P!nk's I'm Not Dead, Nelly Furtado's Loose and Beyoncé Knowles' B'Day. "Miss You Love" was released as the album's second single in the Netherlands and has, since its release there, reached 61 on the Mega Singles Top 100.

On 7 July, 2007 she performed at the German leg of Live Earth in Hamburg.