The New York stage will see two new musicals within the coming year that deal with the grim realities of a black woman’s life in the pre-civil rights South. The first, “Dessa Rose,” which opened Monday at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, is about a teenage slave who escapes bondage and incites a rebellion. Due next season on Broadway is “The Color Purple,” a musicalization of Alice Walker’s tale of Celie, an insecure and repressed woman suffering through poverty and abuse in the first decades of the 19th century.

Both musicals will star the actress known as LaChanze. LaChanze was first discovered by theater audiences as the spirited peasant girl in 1990’s Caribbean-set fantasy “Once On This Island,” but she is only now reaching stardom.

The timing of her ascent is bittersweet. LaChanze is in her fourth year as a widowed single mother, having lost her husband, Cantor Fitzgerald bond trader Calvin Gooding, in the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. His sudden death left her alone to care for their 2-year-old daughter and another she gave birth to six weeks later.

Asked if, given her recent personal history, it is difficult performing in two theater pieces set in such dark chapters of African-American history, she spoke only in terms of her duties as a parent. “It’s a little challenging, because I am a mother. I do struggle with feelings of guilt when I have to be away for so long. I’ve had the luxury of just being a stay-at-home mom for a couple years.”

Her response is not surprising. The stories may be brutal, but they are theater. And she has credited performing – her profession since quitting college in Philadelphia to move to New York in 1987 – as restoring her sense of mental well-being. Just three months after her husband’s death, she accepted a short engagement in the off-Broadway hit “The Vagina Monologues.” The following spring, she participated in a two performance reunion concert of “Once On This Island,” which was dedicated to her late husband. From there, she took on roles in the off-Broadway Michael John LaChiusa musical “Little Fish,” a Paper Mill Playhouse revival of Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire’s “Baby,” and the summer 2004 world premiere of the musical adaptation of “The Color Purple,” by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray, in Atlanta.

And now, “Dessa Rose.” The musical – based on a novel by Sherley Anne Williams about the unlikely bond between a runaway slave and a white female plantation owner who helps secure her freedom – is the work of lyricist-librettist Lynn Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, who, more than anyone else in the theater, are artistically attuned to LaChanze. They wrote “Once On This Island” and “Ragtime,” in which LaChanze also acted. After Gooding died, they wrote a song in tribute titled simply “A Song for LaChanze.” The actress has performed it in concert.

Attempting to categorize her recent vocal assignments, LaChanze – who, with her attractive, puckish face, wide, smiling mouth, and large eyes, would make a good Ariel in “The Tempest” – gives her dedicated collaborators their due. “Stephen Flaherty’s music is written for a trained singer. It requires all the technique that a composer of his ability understands he has access to. The writers of ‘The Color Purple’ are not musical theater writers; they’re from the pop and jazz and R&B worlds. Don’t misunderstand me: their songs are exquisite and beautiful. But they’re written differently. It’s not as vocally challenging.”

“I think LaChanze is the quintessential quintuple threat,” said Ms. Ahrens. “She sings incredibly well, dances incredibly well, she’s a brilliant actor, and she’s stunning to look at.” About her friend’s current success in finding meaty leading roles, the lyricist pointedly observed, “She’s ready for it. She’s come so far in her life experience in the last few years. People recognize that.”

The life experience continues for LaChanze, in ways that seem almost novelistic in their scope and drama. Just as September 11 took away her spouse, the tragedy circuitously led her to a new fiancee, Derek Fordjour. Following her loss, the actress was aided in various September 11-related legal issues by the firm of Richard Spears Kibbe & Orbe, which worked pro bono. LaChanze wished to show her thanks and hit upon the idea of commissioning an artwork for the firm. Her search led to Mr. Fordjour, a painter.

“He was in Atlanta on another commission and we just spoke on the phone for a good month talking about what I needed so he could create his vision for the painting,” said LaChanze. “Through our numerous conversations into the wee hours of the morning, we realized we had a lot more in common than just the painting. A year and a half later we’re engaged.” They will be married on July 30.

The painting Mr. Fordjour created depicts his future wife’s daughters, Celia and Zaya, “as 10- and 12-year-old girls [they’re 3 and 5 now], inside a museum looking at a piece of art representative of their father.”

The marriage will necessitate another name change for a woman who has known many. She was born Rhonda LaChanze Sapp in St. Augustine, Fla. (The middle name, her grandmother’s, means “one who is charmed” in Creole.) She changed it to LaChanze Sapp-Gooding when she got married. On stage, however, she has consistently been, concisely, LaChanze.

“Professionally, I’m always just LaChanze,” she said. “But at the PTA meetings, it will be LaChanze Fordjour.”