You've definitely heard her classic eighties hits on the radio - you've probably sung them drunk in karaoke - and you're about to know her Tony Award-winning musical Kinky Boots, which she has written with Broadway icon Harvey Fierstein and is launching in Melbourne.
But there's one thing about the Patron Saint of big hair and girl power that you probably don't know: she once cooked and ate a squirrel.
"Mmm, I lived in Vermont - they eat squirrels in Vermont," Cyndi Lauper recalls.
"I lived with a guy who didn't want to get a job, but he would go out squirrel hunting all the time...
"I never really cared for squirrels, they were kind of like tree rats, you know."
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The 63-year-old is responsible for some of the most iconic pop anthems in music history, including Girls Just Wanna Have Fun - a song that back in 1983 she rewrote because she found the lyrics misogynistic.
Now some 33 years later, girls still just wanna have fun-damental rights and Lauper says she has spent her career pushing to have more control over her vision.
"Most of my life, I had to fight to write," she says.
"I was just told that 'she should just stand there and sing'. 'Just stand there, listen to the producer, they'll tell you everything you need to do, just do it'.
"What are you supposed to do? Not have a brain? I'm not a robot."
"In the back of my head I'm always saying really? Because when I get that lobotomy I'll be right in touch with you.
"What are you supposed to do? Not have a brain? I'm not a robot."
Her drive to write led to the creation of captivating power ballad True Colors, which she says she wrote in memory of a dear friend who passed away.
"True Colours came to me around the time my best friend died, Gregory.
"His nickname was blue, because he had blue eyes. He had a very rough childhood, he died of AIDs, and I was so sad."
"I heard the melody and the words 'duh duh duh' and I sung against that.
"And somehow that simplicity and that stripped down approach really gave that song a weight.
"As I went to the studio and every time we tried to put music on, it kinda lost it's weight."
Despite her decades in the game, Lauper said she has found a renewed passion in getting to work on Kinky Boots and Broadway.
"When Harvey called me and had that kind of faith, all of a sudden it was like I was five years old again," she says.
