Howie Dorough

Dorough was born August 22, 1973, in Orlando, Florida,[1] where he met his friend and bandmate A.J. McLean through a mutual vocal coach at the Latin carnival in 1989.[2][3] His mother Paula Flores-Dorough, a school worker, is Puerto Rican, and his father, Hoke Dwaine Dorough (1938–2008), a police officer, former army soldier, real estate developer[4] and bank security,[5] was Irish American.[6] He is the youngest by 10 years of five siblings. His sister, Pollyanna, is also a singer.[7] Another sister, Caroline, died from lupus in September 1998.

Dorough’s love and passion for entertainment started when he was three years old, singing “Babyface” with his little guitar.[8] He started performing around age six or seven, thanks to his sister Polyanna, singing during mass in the church choir and having his first role in the musical adaptation of The Wizard of Oz as a singer and actor.[9] Throughout elementary school, his mother enrolled him in children’s community theaters and performed in many community theater productions of top musicals, among them “Sound Of Music”, “Showboat” and “Camelot”[10] and got him in singing/voice and acting lessons by putting him in a performing arts academy where he also took dance lessons in classical ballet, tap, and jazz. He even was in an all-boy ballet troupe.