The music is pounding inside the gilded ballroom of Hotel Montecito in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.
Audiences whip out their phones as Singaporean Laura Lee – clad in a sparkly red frock that shows off her lean physique – begins singing and doing the salsa to Michael Buble’s “Sway.”
The 47-year-old – the youngest contestant among 17 women but already a grandmother of six – ended up sashaying her way to the crown.
The competition, which ended on 23 January, was her third beauty pageant and her second win.
At 44, Ms Lee – who had five grandchildren then – took part in her first pageant, Mrs Singapore, in which she emerged as the first runner-up. Later that year, she won the Mrs Tourism Queen International Pageant in Thailand.
The mother of three, who turns 48 in March, is also a successful entrepreneur behind a logistics business and five frozen food companies.
But life has not always been a bed of roses for Ms Lee, who first became a mother at 20 and a grandmother at 37. Her three children – Cheryl, Sean and Lester – are now 28, 27 and 24 respectively.
Money was scarce growing up. Her electrician father supported a family of six on a monthly salary of $1,500, while her mother, a housewife, looked after their four children.
By age 13, Ms Lee, the second youngest child, was giving English and mathematics tuition to Primary 1 pupils to earn pocket money. At 16, she worked as a sales assistant at a gifting company, selling flowers, hampers and trinkets when she was not in school.
“We never went hungry, but we were not able to afford any luxuries either. It made me want to be more capable, so I could provide my children with a better life,” she recounts to The Straits Times in a video call.