Rita Ora adds glamour to Duke of Sussex’s Sentebale charity concert

Rita Ora turned on the glamour for a night celebrating the work of the Duke of Sussex’s charity supporting children living with Aids.

Wearing a trademark mini-dress, the Let You Love Me singer met Harry before she took to the stage at a rainy Hampton Court for a fundraising concert in aid of the duke’s Sentebale charity.

The duke and the singer hugged when they were introduced at King Henry VIII’s famous home where entertainers from across the Commonwealth performed in the open-air.

Ora said after their meeting: “I’m so excited, a little bit of rain never really hurts anybody, I’m just happy to be here and to be able to support and try and raise as much awareness and money for such a great cause.”

She first met Harry at BBC Radio 1’s Teen Awards in 2016 and said “It’s so nice the amount of people he probably meets to remember that.”

The performer, who was joined by her psychiatrist mother Vera Sahatciu, said she told the duke she was “very grateful” to be asked to perform at the event.

Among the other acts performing were INALA, a Zulu ballet created by award-winning choreographer Mark Baldwin and featuring the Soweto Gospel Choir, and Morena Leraba – a musician and shepherd from Lesotho who fuses traditional Famo music with western influences from rock to reggae.

The choir B Positive, who were Britain’s Got Talent finalists in 2018, also entertained the audience of 3,000, and two of Sentebale’s Let Youth Lead advocates from Lesotho and Botswana, Rethabile Sereba and Sekgabo Seselamarumo also took to the stage.

The concert raised awareness and funds for Sentebale, the charity founded by the duke and Lesotho’s Prince Seeiso, to support children and young people living with HIV and Aids in Lesotho, Botswana and Malawi – countries where the virus remains a leading cause of death.

Harry spoke at the start of the concert and joked with the crowds, saying: “I am not going take up too much of your time, I realise you’re all here to see Rita Ora not me.”

After a group cheered loudly he quipped: “Especially you at the front.”

Harry thanked the crowds for raising funds for Sentebale by buying tickets to the concert, adding: “We’ve managed to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds from this evening and every single one of you has played a part in that, so you have the ability to have an enormous amount of fun while knowing that you’ve changed a lot of lives in Lesotho, Botswana and Malawi at the same time.”

He went on to say: “A conversation around HIV is still shrouded in stigma and stigma thrives off silence. We here tonight and we at Sentebale hope to empower the next generation to be able to end that stigma.”