Alberth Hernández, born Alberto Fermín Núñez Hernández on 19 February 1976 in Bonagua, La Vega province, is a Dominican merengue singer and songwriter. Known as «El Príncipe del Merengue», he became widely known in the 1990s through «Volveré» with Joseph Núñez y su Banda Swing and later built a repertoire of his own merengue and bachata songs.

From Bonagua to Santo Domingo

He grew up in a family of singers and worked as a shoeshiner as a child. In 1985 he moved to Santo Domingo and settled in Cristo Rey. At eleven he sang «Con olor a hierba» at a school event; he later won prizes in contests for new singers, including «Buscando Estrellas». He studied philosophy and letters to improve his songwriting. Before reaching a larger audience with Joseph Núñez, he performed with several merengue orchestras.

The voice of «Volveré»

His defining recording came in 1994, when Hernández sang lead for Joseph Núñez y su Banda Swing on «Volveré». The song — the Spanish version of the Italian I Santo California original, written by Ignazio Polizzy, Claudio Natili and Marcello Ramoino — was arranged for the band by Ysrael Casado, and Hernández's delivery turned it into a standard of romantic merengue, the record Dominican audiences still identify him by. A second hit of that era, «Quiere ser mi amante», fixed his billing as El Príncipe, a nickname that has stayed attached to his name ever since.

Composer first

Unlike many merengue frontmen of his generation, Hernández built his repertoire on his own writing. His compositions anchor his catalogue, and they were gathered in 2022 on «Está Bueno Santo Domingo», a twelve-track album released through Sueños Records and orchestrated by Alberto Plata. The collection moves between merengue and bachata — it includes «Me Juego Entero por Tu Amor», his homage to Sandro — and pairs him with Silvio Mora on «Te Espero en la Cama», a meeting of two generations of Dominican popular singing.

El Mismo Swing and the viral years

In his current stage Hernández fronts his own group, billed as El Príncipe Alberth Hernández & El Mismo Swing, and has kept a steady run of digital singles, among them «Por Qué Ella Llora» and «Cuando Estés Triste». The most talked-about is «Murió el Artista» (2026), a satire on posthumous fame in which he performs sitting up in a coffin — a joke that briefly escaped its frame when social-media posts announced «murió el artista» as news. He was, demonstrably, alive: in October 2026 the television program «Pasando Factura» gave him an on-air career recognition, and he continues to promote new music on his own channels.

Legacy

Alberth Hernández's place in Dominican merengue rests on the rare combination of a signature voice and a songwriter's catalogue behind it. «Volveré» gave the 1990s one of its lasting romantic anthems, and the 2022 album preserved the compositions that surrounded it, in his own performances, for the digital record. That he remains active — recording, performing and being recognised on Dominican television more than thirty years after his breakthrough — makes his story one of persistence as much as of a single hit: El Príncipe never abdicated.