Alan Menken (born July 22, 1949) is an American Broadway and Academy Award winning film score composer. Menken has collaborated with several renowned lyricists including Howard Ashman (1950-1991), Tim Rice and Stephen Schwartz. He is best known for his work on several Disney animated features, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Hercules, Pocahontas, Aladdin, and Home on the Range. His first successful work was the 1982 off-Broadway musical Little Shop of Horrors. Menken has received eight Academy Awards, and has one of the the highest film to Oscar ratio of anyone in the industry. Howard Ashman ( May 17, 1950 - March 14, 1991) was an American playwright and movie music lyricist. Ashman first studied at Boston University and Goddard College (with a stop at Tufts University's Summer Theater) and then went on to achieve his master's degree from Indiana University in 1974. He collaborated with Alan Menken on several films, notably animated features for Disney, Ashman writing the lyrics and Menken composing the scores. Ashman and Menken first worked on a 1979 musical adapted from Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. They also collaborated on Little Shop of Horrors with Ashman as director, lyricist, and librettist. Along with Menken, Ashman was the co-recipient of two Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes and two Oscars. His second Academy Award in 1992 was awarded posthumuously for Best Song and was accepted by his partner, Bill Lauch. It was the first Academy Award given posthumously to someone who had died of AIDS. Ashman died on March 14, 1991, at age 40, during the making of both Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin. The song Proud of Your Boy was the one of the last songs ever written by Ashman, for Aladdin but was cut from the movie after the mother was taken out of the story. Ashman and Menken had finished the songs for Beauty and the Beast, but Tim Rice was brought in to finish the Aladdin songs with Menken. Beauty and the Beast was dedicated to him with the following: To our friend, Howard, Who gave a mermaid her voice, and a beast his soul. We will be forever grateful. Howard Ashman 1950-1991 Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.