Lica Cecato was born Lizette Cecato on February 23, 1956, in São Paulo, into a family of Italian immigrant musicians: her father played saxophone in the Orquestra Simonetti, and her grandfather worked as a conductor. That Italian family lineage is likely what led to her being misfiled as an Italian artist in an earlier, unrelated sweep of this project — she is Brazilian by birth, and that fact stands as confirmed here.

Her path to a music career was circuitous. She worked as a graphic designer in Rome in 1974, then began performing under the stage name "Lua Branca" in Rome's Campo de' Fiori piazza, a run that lasted until 1986. Her jazz career proper started in 1982 at the city's Blue Moon club, singing alongside the Tonolo Brothers, and in 1984 she worked as a cruise director and entertainer aboard the ship Achille Lauro, singing her way around the world's ports — including, crucially, a stretch in Japan that left her fluent in Japanese and steeped in the country's jazz-club circuit. In 1985 she won a full scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, awarded together with the Sarah Vaughan Award. She later refined her vocal technique with Eva Plüer in Germany (1993) and Márcia Taborda in Brazil (from 2000).

In 1990 she relocated to Cologne, Germany, and spent the following years touring extensively across Europe, working alongside guitarist Paul Shigihara, bassist Martin Wind, and saxophonist Charlie Mariano — serious company for a singer still building her name. Her debut as a bandleader followed in 1992: Our Favorite Songs, a duo record with Italian guitarist Stefano Scutari, the start of a musical partnership that would resurface decades later. In 1995 she contributed the track "Manawara" to Music of the World, a various-artists compilation marking the United Nations' 50th anniversary.

Sessions recorded in December 1996 at Topaz Studio in Cologne — tracks credited to an album called Pele, produced with Antonio Dias — surfaced according to her own site on the 2001 compilation Balan-Balancing New Bossa (reissued 2003 on Art Music/Sony under the same catalog number as her Brazilian breakthrough, Constelário, suggesting the two may share more than a coincidental release history, though that connection isn't fully resolved here). Constelário itself, released in Brazil in 2001 and produced by Júnior Aguiar at Joá Studio in Rio de Janeiro, was her first album released in her home country. It featured guitarist Romero Lubambo and earned a Latin Grammy nomination in the MPB category — a genuine marker of recognition inside Brazil's own music industry, not just its diaspora. Lubambo stayed on for Live in Europe (recorded November 2001 at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon and Stadtgarten in Cologne; Discogs dates the release 2003, AllMusic lists 2006 — both are given here since neither source resolves the other), before Cecato's own Pimenta Rosa followed in 2005.

Her ties to Japan resurfaced directly on 2008's Live at the Brazilian Embassy in Tokyo, recorded live in April 2006 with pianist Paulo Cesar Gomes. The two self-released albums that came next, Gingabytes (2009) and Copacabana (2010), quietly punch well above the profile of a self-released artist: both albums' credits list bassist Richard Bona, and Copacabana adds bassist John Patitucci and guitarist Vernon Reid, with drummers Rodney Holmes and Will Calhoun rotating across the two records — a genuinely A-list rhythm section for a singer working outside the major-label system.

Cecato eventually settled in Venice, Italy, where she now divides her time alongside Rio de Janeiro and Kamakura, Japan. Quero Querer (2018) was self-released, and 2021 brought a full-circle reunion with Stefano Scutari: Due Comete, funded through a Kickstarter campaign and recorded, mixed, and mastered by Cristiano Verardo at Waterland Studio in Venice, with guest turns from percussionist Leo Di Angilla and vocalist Donatella Castellani. In 2023 she released two further albums with pianist/collaborator Carlo Morena, Jazz Mpb and Omaggio, alongside a run of singles including a cover of the Neapolitan standard "Cu'mme." Her own official biography describes a catalog of 14 albums and more than 70 original songs — a career-spanning claim from her own site, offered here as reported rather than independently tallied.

Beyond records, Cecato works as a genuinely interdisciplinary artist: she folds poetry, dance, and visual art into her performances, plays shamisen alongside voice and guitar, completed a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris where she presented two exhibitions and two concerts, and has premiered interactive contemporary work with percussionist Florent Jodelet of the Orchestre National de France. Her multilingual performances — built on Portuguese, Italian, English, and Japanese — have taken her to festivals including Cologne's Stadtgarten, the Java Jazz Festival, the JAKJAZZ Festival in Indonesia, and the Bunbury Jazz Festival in Western Australia.

Cecato's voice is a deep, colorful contralto, and her music sits at the crossing point of Brazilian jazz, MPB, and bossa nova with the multilingual, multimedia sensibility of a European-based performer who has spent decades touring outside Brazil. Her catalog moves comfortably between intimate Portuguese-language songbook records (Constelário, produced with Júnior Aguiar and guitarist Romero Lubambo) and harder-edged, internationally staffed sessions — Gingabytes and Copacabana both draw on top-tier American session players (Richard Bona, John Patitucci, Vernon Reid, Rodney Holmes, Will Calhoun) for a sound closer to jazz-funk fusion than traditional bossa nova. Running through all of it is the interdisciplinary instinct she carries from her non-musical background: poetry, dance, and visual art are treated as part of the performance itself, not separate from it. That range, plus her fluency across Portuguese, Italian, English, and Japanese lyrics, is what earned her the Sarah Vaughan Award alongside her Berklee scholarship in 1985.