Rie Funakoshi, better known by her stage name Rie fu, was born on January 11, 1985, in Tokyo, Japan. She is a singer-songwriter who began playing the piano during her time living in Maryland from 1992 to 1995. Her musical influences include Carole King, Joni Mitchell, The Carpenters, and Yumi Matsutoya. Rie fu's music career started in 2004 with the release of her first single "Rie who!", which featured the B-side "decay". She was signed to Sony's Palm Beach label after sending a demo tape to the record company while still in high school. Her breakthrough came when her song "Life Is Like a Boat" was chosen as the ending theme for the anime series Bleach. In 2005, she released her self-titled debut album and the single "I Wanna Go To A Place...", which served as the third ending theme for Gundam SEED Destiny. Rie fu's subsequent releases include "Tiny Tiny Melody" (2006), Tobira Album (2007), Urban Romantic (2009), and At Rie Sessions (2010). Notable collaborations include contributions to m-flo's Beat Space Nine, Naoto Hiroyama's solo project delofamilia, and Yōsui Inoue's 40th anniversary tour. Her song "Anata ga Koko ni Iru Riyuu" was used as the fifth closing theme for the anime series D.Gray-man. Throughout the rest of the decade, she continued to release albums at a steady pace, including Bigger Picture (2012), I (2014), O (2016), and Portraits (2017). After relocating to the UK, she released the EP Business Trips under the name Rié.
