Rajaa Mohammed

Rajaa Mohammed was born on 4 October 1962 in Kuwait. Her father was Syrian and her mother Kuwaiti. Her sister is the actress Awatif Mohammed, and the retired singer Al-Anoud is a relative.

She trained her voice at the Higher Institute of Musical Arts in Kuwait, and was only sixteen when she made her stage debut.

Rajaa Mohammed began her career in 1978 in the children's play Sinbad the Sailor (Al-Sindibad Al-Bahri), with Abdulrahman Al-Aqel and Istiqlal Ahmed. After a series of small roles her acting and singing work grew rapidly, and by the early 1980s she was regarded as one of the most prominent young female artists in the Gulf.

Much of her work was for children. She sang solo songs in the educational series Iftah Ya Simsim and more than fifty songs for the first part of the health awareness programme Salamtak. In the 1979 operetta Qanadeel Al-Amal (Lanterns of Hope), about respect for parents, she sang with Mohammed Al-Mansour, and their song became the theme of the series Ila Abi wa Ummi ma'a al-Tahiya (To My Father and Mother, With Love). She starred with Abdulrahman Al-Aqel in Al-Zarzour (1982), one of the first children's plays in Kuwait, and in the musical play Tarzan (1983), in which she played a gentle girl who urges others to do good.

In drama she played the romantic teenage lead in Ahlam Saghira (Small Dreams, 1982), with Suad Abdullah, Ibrahim Al-Salal, Hayat Al-Fahad and Khalid Al-Obaid. The series was halted after its first episodes because its storyline was considered bold for the time, and was shown in full some four years later. Her other credits included Al-Bisat Al-Sihri (The Magic Carpet), the Fahad Al-Askar trilogy, Hayatna and Ghadan Ummi Qalat Li.

In 1983 she appeared in Khalti Qumasha, one of the best known Kuwaiti television series, as Laila, the lively, music-loving daughter of Haji Marzouq (Khalid Al-Nafisi) and younger sister of Mahbouba (Suad Abdullah). Her last work was the operetta Cinderella, with Mohammed Al-Mansour, Ali Al-Mufidi and Muna Issa. Kuwaiti newspapers have described her as one of the founders of children's theatre in Kuwait and the Arab world.

Rajaa Mohammed left the stage while in her early twenties, after the operetta Cinderella. Sources differ on the year, giving 1983 or 1984. According to the Arabic Wikipedia she married Zuhair Al-Anjari and chose to retire to devote herself to her family and the upbringing of her children, and she began wearing the hijab.

She stayed away from the media for the rest of her life, apart from a short interview with the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Anbaa in 1989. In 2012 she was honoured by Awatif Al-Badr at the Kuwait Youth Theatre.

Rajaa Mohammed died on Tuesday 20 October 2026, aged 64. Her death was reported that day by the Kuwaiti newspapers Al Rai, Al Qabas and Al Jarida, and by Erem News and the Muscat Daily. The press reports did not state a cause of death, and no funeral details had been published at the time of the first reports.

Al Rai wrote that she had left after a short artistic journey that was rich in lasting memories, and the newspapers offered their condolences to her family.

Although her career lasted only about six years, Rajaa Mohammed is remembered as one of the defining voices of Kuwaiti children's entertainment in its golden period. Her songs for Iftah Ya Simsim and Salamtak, her stage work with Abdulrahman Al-Aqel and Mohammed Al-Mansour, and her role as Laila in Khalti Qumasha remain familiar to Gulf audiences who grew up with them, and Kuwaiti critics have credited her with helping to found children's theatre in the region.