has perpetually reinvented herself while maintaining her status as iconic pop diva over a 25-year career.
The singer, who came from working-class origins in the northern state of Michigan
to become the world's top-paid female singer,
married the British director in Scotland in December 2000, just after their son Rocco was born.
In May this year they formally adopted the now three-year-old David Banda,
an motherless child from the southern African country of Malawi.
Madonna also has a daughter Lourdes, 12, with her former fitness trainer Carlos Leon.
From kinky virgin to Christian devotee, cowgirl to disco queen, bisexual exhibitionist
to anti-war activist and beyond, the risque and border-pushing images
Madonna has inhabited are countless.
Along the way it has made her a fortune, with almost $US200 million
from a world tour in 2006, the top-earning tour by a female artist in history
according to Forbes magazine.
She was born Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone on August 16, 1958,
to a father of Italian origin and a mother of French-Canadian roots who died in 1963
of breast cancer when her daughter was just five.
In 1977 the Catholic-educated young singer and dancer headed for New York City
with $US35 in her pocket, scraping a living by everything from nude modelling,
selling doughnuts, dancing, singing and playing in smalltime bands.
Her first big single was Everybody in 1982, followed by more big hits
Lucky Star, Borderline and Holiday.
The 1985 release of Like A Virgin propelled Madonna onto the international stage.
It was followed up in 1986 with another disco anthem, Material Girl.
Other major '80s hits included the breathy 1989 pop paean Like a Prayer,
while she branched out into acting - albeit with lesser success than her music career -
in Desperately Seeking Susan and Who's That Girl?
But the early 1990s saw perhaps her most striking image decision:
the pointy cone-shaped bras she donned on her Blond Ambition Tour in 1990.
A decade later she was writing books for children.
The English Roses (2003), a tale of schoolchildren in London,
topped the New York Times bestseller list.
Her romantic life has seen its ups and downs, even before today's confirmation
that she was splitting from 40-year-old Ritchie.
She married for the first time in 1986, to actor Sean Penn, but they divorced four years later.
She was also romantically linked to another leading actor, Warren Beatty,
with whom she starred in the 1990 adventure Dick Tracy.
After marrying Ritchie she put down roots in Britain,
buying at least five properties in London including a $US14 million house.
In the late 1990s her music took off in a new direction,
thumping to a new dance-flavoured beat on her multi-award winning 1998 album Ray of Light.
The period also saw her take a spiritual step seen as a potential move away
from her sex kitten image, embracing Kabbalah, an Orthodox Jewish sect with ancient roots
but a trendy modern-day following in Hollywood.
But the provocative instincts remained. In 2003 she grabbed the showbiz world's attention
by clinching pop princess Britney Spears in a lingering kiss on stage
at the 2003 MTV Music Video Awards.
Her latest album Hard Candy came out in early 2008, her last collaboration with Warner
before the entry into force of a global contract with American concert organiser Live Nation.
In August she both turned 50 and set out on a new world tour entitled "Sticky and Sweet", which is still under way.
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