Latin music star Marisela plays Santa Rosa

Singer Marisela Hernandez - once hailed as the “Latin Madonna” and sometimes called “Dama de Hierro (Lady of Iron),” taken from one of her album titles - mostly goes just by her first name, Marisela.

It has been a few years since the singer has performed in Santa Rosa, but she returns Saturday for a live performance at Santa Rosa’s Luther Burbank Center for the Arts.

“This will be the beginning of my new tour,” Marisela said by phone from her home in Los Angeles. “I have a large band and I have singers. And this is where it all begins.”

During the past year, she performed in Mexico, Central America and South America, as well as the United States, including shows in Las Vegas.

“I’ve been writing and preparing my own new music and working on record production with other artists,” Marisela said. “And I’m writing a book, the story of my life. Everybody’s been asking me for that for a long time.”

It’s a pretty good story. Born in Los Angeles in 1966, Marisela found early success at age 6, starring in the children’s television “Villa Alegre” (Happy Village),” which ran on several networks during the ‘70s.

“It was the ‘Sesame Street’ for Latin television,” she said, “but I started my career before that, in TV commercials. Later I did appearances on different soap operas.”

She recorded her first album at age 18 in 1984, and went on to record more than a dozen albums over the next several decades.

Her cover version of Barbara George’s single “I Know (You Don’t Love Me No More),” retitled “Ya No,” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Latin Songs chart in 1990. Her singing career landed her on the top Mexican variety shows, “Siempre Domingo” (“Always on Sunday”) and “Sabado Gigante” (“Gigantic Saturday”).

Busy as she is with her multiple projects, Marisela said she still enjoys touring and performing for live audiences.

“I have beautiful fans in little towns that I don’t even know yet,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 707-521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @danarts.