Carmit Bachar

Carmit Bachar is a singer, dancer, actress, and model best known as an original band member of the Pussycat Dolls, a wildly successful girl group that has sold over 55 million albums worldwide. She is the only member of the band who was already part of the Pussycat Dolls dance troupe before they began releasing music, first joining the revue in 1995.

Born in Los Angeles to an Israeli father and a mother of Dutch, Chinese, and Indonesian descent, both professional dancers, Carmit struggled with self-esteem as a child due to her cleft lip and cleft palate, which led to bullying by her peers and required numerous painful surgeries to repair. She still managed to excel as a dancer and a rhythmic gymnast, competing as part of the national rhythmic gymnastics team and placing 5th at the US Olympic trials in 1992.

In 2002, Carmit invited her friend Gwen Stefani to perform with the Pussycat Dolls, and Interscope’s Ron Fair and Jimmy Iovine attended the performance. Interscope signed the Dolls to a music contract, and Carmit was chosen as one of three lead vocalists alongside new additions Nicole Scherzinger and Melody Thornton. Their debut album, PCD, sold millions of copies and went multi-platinum in several countries, including the United States and United Kingdom. Carmit departed the group in advance of their second album, 2008’s Doll Domination, to pursue solo projects. She rejoined the Dolls in 2019 for their comeback single “React”.

Outside of her work with PCD, Carmit is a celebrated dancer who has performed with some of the biggest stars in the world. She was the featured dancer performing “Livin’ La Vida Loca” on Ricky Martin’s celebrated 1999 world tour, appears in iconic music videos by legendary musicians like Aaliyah, Beyoncé, No Doubt, and Missy Elliott, and was a back-up dancer for Janet Jackson at the Super Bowl XXXVIII Halftime Show.

Carmit is an ambassador for Operation Smile, an international charity supporting children in need born with cleft lip and/or cleft palate. She is a passionate supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, and mother to a daughter, Keala, with her fiancé Kevin Whitaker.