Easily noticeable for his soaring falsetto and flamboyant appearance, Mika was born one of the five children of an American banker and a Lebanese woman on August 18, 1983 in Beirut, Lebanon under the name Michael Holbrook Penniman. As a child, he spent his early years in Paris, France before eventually settled in London, England where he attended Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle in South Kensington then the exclusive Westminster School. This period sadly was not a pleasant one to go through as the kid incessantly received verbal bullying which later led him to experience what he referred as "little breakdown" at the age of eleven. "I was called the typical fag and all those other homophobic, horrible little comments that kids throw at each other," he recalled.