Ananda Lewis, the famed MTV veejay, media personality, model, and social activist died on June 11 after a lengthy battle with breast cancer, according to a Facebook post from her sister Lakshmi Emory.
Lewis, who hailed from Los Angeles, and was a graduate of Howard University, the historically Black university in Washington, D.C., got her start as a host of the legendary BET teen television talk show, “Teen Summit,” which filmed in Washington, D.C., where the network’s headquarters were before moving to New York City.
In the late 90s, Lewis moved to MTV where she became a staple of much of the then-dominant music network’s programming, from “Total Request Live” to live installations for spring break and the like. Because of the prominence of MTV’s programming at the time, Lewis (along with other MTV veejays) became celebrities on the music scene.
After leaving MTV in 2001, Lewis tried her hand at hosting a talk show, “The Ananda Lewis Show,” before moving on to correspondent roles for various networks, ensuring that remained a popular figure in culture and entertainment.
In October 2020, Lewis shared publicly that she had been battling breast cancer for years. In a 2025 as-told-to for Essence, she broke down her journey and how her body had been reacting, positively and negatively, to various treatments, and how COVID had impacted her journey. She shared that at some point, she began looking for alternative treatments for her breast cancer as opposed to the traditional methods for treating it, and by January 2025, she announced that she was living with stage 4 breast cancer. In her feature story, she urged Black women to lean heavily into prevention through testing and learning their bodies.
In that story she shared, “We’re not meant to stay here forever. We come to this life, have experiences—and then we go. Being real about that with yourself changes how you choose to live. I don’t want to spend one more minute than I have to suffering unnecessarily. That, for me, is not the quality of life I’m interested in. When it’s time for me to go, I want to be able to look back on my life and say, I did that exactly how I wanted to. We all have that right. I know I’ve done the right thing for me. It might not be the right thing for anybody else, but it doesn’t have to be.”
She was 52 years old. Lewis is survived by her son, Langston.
Rest in peace, Ananda Lewis.
