She played the lead role of Hanna Glawari in the Welsh National Opera's production of The Merry Widow, which toured the United Kingdom in 2005. She has also sung opera and pop classics with Bryan Ferry, Eurythmics and Mick Hucknall to celebrate the arrival of the new century on Millennium Eve in the grounds at the Royal Observatory and National Maritime Museum. Garrett has performed across the world, in countries throughout Europe, and also the United States, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea. From 1984, as principal soprano at English National Opera, she became well known for her performances in productions of the operas Serse, Le Nozze di Figaro, Così fan tutte, Die Fledermaus and The Mikado. She subsequently sang, in 1980, Alice in Le comte Ory at the London Coliseum and Dorinda in Orlando at the Wexford Festival, in 1981, also at Wexford, the title role in Zaide, in 1982 Sophie in Werther with Opera North and in 1984 Damigella in L'incoronazione di Poppea at Glyndebourne. Her professional debut, in 1979, was as Amor in Orontea at the music festival in Batignano. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music and an alumna of the prestigious National Opera Studio, she won the Decca Prize of the Kathleen Ferrier Award in 1979, thereby launching her career. Garrett has had an extensive music career. While a student at the Royal Academy of Music she worked as a life model, something of which she is still proud.

She has two sisters, Jill and Kay, one step-sister, Louise, and two step-brothers named Robert and Nicholas. They lived nearby just south of the village her mother Margaret (née Wall) was a talented singing seamstress and became the school secretary at Lesley's primary school.

Her grandfather Colin Wall was a classical pianist her father Derek worked as a railway signalman and then as a schoolteacher at Hatfield Woodhouse Primary School, eventually going on to become a headmaster.

As she grew up she inherited her family's love of music. She attended Thorne Fieldside Infant and Junior Schools and Thorne Grammar School. Garrett was born in the town of Thorne, near Doncaster in South Yorkshire, into a musical family.

Opera singer woman