In 1992, she divorced Krynicki and married music producer Roger Larocque, whom she divorced after only a few months.

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During the mid-1990s, Carter became involved with a woman named Ann Kaser, referred to only rarely in public as Carter's "friend and business partner." Soon Kaser and Carter and Carter's two young sons were sharing a home in Beverly Hills, California.

Though she presented a powerfully upbeat persona in her professional life, Carter had recurring health and emotional problems. During the 1980s she attempted suicide and fought alcohol and cocaine addictions. She suffered from chronic diabetes and in 1992 she underwent surgery to repair brain aneurysms.

In 1989, she was devastated when one of her brothers, Dr. Bernard Taylor, whom she described as "the best friend I ever had," died of AIDS. His death was to inspire Carter to AIDS activism in the 1990s, working especially with Project Angel Food, a Los Angeles-based organization that delivered food to people living with AIDS, and with Project Inform, a community-based educational and lobbying group.

For all her difficulties, which also included bankruptcies in 1995 and 2002, Carter continued her dynamic career in the 1990s with a role on the ABC sitcom Hangin' with Mr. Cooper from 1992 through 1997, and frequently guest-starring on television series such as Ally McBeal and Reba and made-for-television movies.

In 1991, she starred in a Los Angeles revival of Jerry Herman's Hello Dolly! with an African American cast.

In the 1990s, Carter also provided voices for a number of characters in animated television and film projects, including Bruce W. Smith's Bebe's Kids (1992).

She also had roles in several theatrical films, most notably Charles Matthau's film of Truman Capote's The Grass Harp (1995) and Ismail Merchant's The Proprietor (1996).

In 1997, Carter returned to Broadway to play the hard-hearted Mrs. Hannigan in the twentieth-anniversary revival of the Charles Strouse, Martin Charnin, Thomas Meehan musical Annie. Carter became upset when she learned that promotional material for the show featured images of a white woman in her role. The producers denied that there was any racism involved in the advertising, saying that they used the pictures of actress Marcia Lewis because they had been shot before Carter had committed to the role and they could not afford to discard them.

During her year-long stint on Annie, she was plagued by health problems and one night collapsed on stage from an insulin insufficiency.

In 1999, Carter joined with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus to present a memorable concert called "Misbehavin'!" She conceived of the concert as a means of helping herself come to terms with the loss of her brother some ten years previously.

The concert consisted of music that her brother particularly enjoyed. "I wanted to sing with [the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus]," she said, "because I think they are wonderful." She added that her brother would have loved "being up there with the Chorus, either playing piano or conducting."

When she authorized the Chorus to release a cd of the concert, she declined any royalties and insisted that all proceeds go to the Chorus's Financial Assistance Network (F.A.N. Club), which offers grants or no-interest loans to chorus members who otherwise would not be able to participate in chorus activities.

In 2002, Carter was cast in a revival of the musical Raisin (music by Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan; book by Robert Nemiroff and Charlotte Zaltzberg), based on the Lorraine Hansberry play, Raisin in the Sun. Carter was to be Mama Lena, the matriarch of an African American family struggling to survive in 1950s Chicago, a role she seemed born to play.

Sadly, however, on January 23, 2003, two weeks before opening night, Nell Carter's thirteen-year-old son Joshua found her dead at their home in Beverly Hills, California, apparently from heart problems related to her ongoing diabetes.

Those who had not known that Carter was a lesbian were surprised to learn that her heir and the custodial parent of her two sons was her partner and friend, Ann Kaser.

American television sitcoms have consistently reflected the presence of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people, often in distorted and stereotyped ways, but occasionally in ways that acknowledge our humanity and complexity.

Blues music as it flourished in the 1920s was women's music, and it often featured sexually-inflected lyrics performed by women who were openly bisexual or lesbian.

Historically, cabarets and revues have been much more likely to mention or imply same-sex desire than the "legitimate" theater; and same-sex desire has been less frequently condemned in cabarets and revues than in mainstream plays.

Since they were first established in the 1970s, lesbian and gay musical organizations have grown remarkably in number, size, and sophistication.

Since cinema began, Hollywood has been fascinated with finding ways of representing homosexuality.

Lesbian actresses have played a significant role in Hollywood, but their contributions have rarely been recognized or spoken of openly; the "lavender marriage" is by no means a relic of the past.

The Harlem Renaissance, an African-American literary movement of the 1920s and 1930s, included several important gay and lesbian writers.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons have had tremendous influence on popular music, though some musical genres have been more receptive to a homosexual presence than others.

The musical has been a significant aspect of American gay male culture, manifesting itself both in diva worship and, more recently, in the presentation of openly gay characters and shows written by gay writers primarily for gay audiences.

Gay, lesbian, and bisexual actors and actresses are among the elite of contemporary theater, but only recently have many come out publicly.

Bisexual choreographer and director Michael Bennett, winner of eight Tony Awards, developed a fluid, cinematic style of choreography and staging.

As a part of her fight for social justice, playwright and political activist Lorraine Hansberry supported the emerging American lesbian liberation movement.

A proponent of the "diva musical," Broadway composer and lyricist Jerry Herman made homosexuality the undisguised subject of La Cage aux Folles but he did so just as gay culture lost its need of a diva to voice its concerns.