Raised as the youngest of nine children to a traditional Yemenite family in the Hatikva neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Haza's fairy-tale climb to fame and fortune has become the stuff of local legend.

At age of 12, she joined the Hatikva Theater group. With the encouragement of the group's founder Bezalel Aloni, who later became her manager, Haza took on stronger and more demanding leading roles within the Hatikva group, and by the time she was 19, her solo career was launched.

After serving two years in the IDF she recorded her first solo album and quickly rose to become one of the country's top singers. She was voted second in the 1983 Eurovision Song Contest with "Chai" and released 16 gold and platinum albums.

Then, the unlikely idea of matching traditional Yemenite songs with a throbbing dance beat unexpectedly launched an international career.

In 1985, Haza, released her first international album, Yemenite Songs, a collection of interpretations of devotional poetry written by 17th-century rabbi, Shalom Shabazi. Then in 1988, Ofra appeared in the remix of "Paid in Full" in the Colors movie soundtrack.

Not long after, Ofra's song "Im Nin Alu" reached No. 1 in the German charts for nine straight weeks and No. 1 in the Euro charts for two weeks, making her an international name.

Haza focused on the international arena, relocating to Los Angeles, but she returned home a number of times each year for performances and visits. On February 3, 1987, Haza survived an airplane crash in a Cessna aircraft on the Israeli/Jordanian border.

Her next album, Shaday, continued her international success, selling over one million copies worldwide and receiving The New Music Award for the International Album of the Year in New York City in 1989.

The success of Shaday broke into the US, Canadian, and Japanese markets as her tour continuously sold out and her single, "Im Nin Alu," won first place at the Tokyo music festival.

Her visual image, with her colorful national dress and the exotic mixture of Middle Eastern ballads and rhythms blended with western styles, helped to make her Israel's best-known female solo singer in the US and Europe.

In 1992, Ofra's album Kirya was nominated for the Grammy Awards for the best album in the World Beat category.

At the request of the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Haza performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo in December 1994.

"I'm happy with what I have. I thank God. I am the first Israeli to have this kind of success, so why should I complain about anything?" she told The Jerusalem Post in 1994.

Haza continued to appear in many projects in recent years, including the DreamWorks Prince of Egypt soundtrack and The Governess soundtrack, both in 1998.

Haza married businessman Doron Ashkenazi in 1997. The couple had no children.