Bernice Ofei died on September 12, 2026. She was 63.
The Ghanaian gospel singer, born in Accra and also known as Bernice Offei, built a career that crossed the pulpit and the bank floor. She worked as a musician, songwriter, and banker, a combination that placed her inside two of Ghana's most demanding institutions at once.
Her recording career peaked with the 2007 album Life. The record won her two awards at the 10th edition of the MTN Ghana Music Awards, and it followed a run of releases that grew her name across the West African gospel circuit. In 2009, she took Best Female Vocal Performance and Songwriter of the Year at the Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, cementing a period of sustained recognition in the country's gospel mainstream.
She recorded six albums in total. The exact titles and release dates of the other five were not immediately confirmed in reports of her death.
Before the albums, there was the education. Ofei attended Achimota School, the Accra institution that has produced generations of Ghanaian professionals and artists, and later studied at the University of Ghana. She worked for Standard Chartered Bank, a detail that placed her inside the corporate sector at a time when few Ghanaian female gospel singers were also managing banking careers.
The cause of death has been reported as cancer, though no official statement from her family or representatives has been released. The reports list her death date as September 12, 2026, and her age as 63.
Ofei's career sat at an intersection that defined much of Ghanaian gospel music in the 2000s: the music was devotional, but the industry around it was becoming professionalized. Award shows were growing in scale, and artists who could write, perform, and hold down a day job were increasingly common. Ofei was one of the more visible examples of that balance.
Her songwriting, specifically, drew recognition. The Songwriter of the Year award at the 2009 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards singled out her craft, not just her voice. That distinction mattered in a genre where the message is often the product, and where the writer's hand is not always named in the same breath as the performer's.
The MTN Ghana Music Awards wins for Life came at the event's 10th edition, a milestone year for the ceremony itself. The album's two awards placed Ofei among the night's more decorated acts, in a field that included the broader Ghanaian music scene, not just gospel.
Achimota School has a long history of producing figures who go on to shape Ghanaian public life. Ofei's path from that campus to the University of Ghana, then to Standard Chartered Bank and the recording studio, mirrors a particular kind of Ghanaian success story: one built on formal education and parallel careers, where the art and the day job reinforce each other rather than compete.
The reports of her death arrived with the sparse details typical of an initial announcement. Six albums. Two major award ceremonies. A banking career. A diagnosis of cancer. The specifics of her final years, her survivors, and the arrangements for her funeral have not been made public.
What is known is the record. Life remains the album that carried her to the top of the awards circuit, and the two trophies from the MTN Ghana Music Awards are the concrete markers of her peak. The 2009 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards double win, for voice and for writing, is the other.
She was 63 years old, born in Accra, educated at Achimota and Legon, employed by Standard Chartered, and remembered across Ghana as a gospel singer who won on her own terms. The last album she released, Life, was the one that defined her.
According to Dead-People.
Update — Sep 13, 2026: **Update:** Bernice Offei died on September 12, 2026, at the age of 63, with family and close associates confirming the loss. Beyond her celebrated career as a gospel singer and songwriter, Offei was also a career banker who had worked with Standard Chartered Bank, according to her published biography. Her musical achievements included winning Best Female Vocal Performance and Songwriter of the Year at the 2009 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards, while her sixth album, *Life*, released in 2007, later earned her two honours at the 10th MTN Ghana Music Awards. Sources indicate that cancer was a factor in her passing, though further details regarding her medical history have not been publicly disclosed. Tributes have begun to surface from colleagues in both the music and banking communities, remembering her as a devoted artist and professional. Dead-People