Ms. Weil was born on Oct. 18, 1940, in New York City, the younger of two children of Morris Weil, who owned a furniture company, and Dorothy (Mendez) Weil.

Growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and later on the Upper East Side, she trained as an actress and dancer and dreamed of a life in theater, a subject she later majored in at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y.

“I was always fixated on Broadway,” she said in a 2016 video interview with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “I wanted to write for Broadway, I had always pictured myself doing something on Broadway.”

She channeled those youthful longings into the lyrics for “On Broadway,” which she originally wrote from the point of view of a small-town girl dreaming of a future on the Great White Way — a dream that, the lyrics acknowledged, often comes with dashed hopes:

They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway

They say there’s always magic in the air

But when you’re walking down the street

And you ain’t had enough to eat

The glitter rubs right off and you’re nowhere

Ms. Weil eventually changed the song’s protagonist to a male for the Drifters’ version, which charted No. 9 as a single in 1962. Sixteen years later, George Benson lodged his own jazz-inflected version at No. 7.

In addition to her husband and daughter, Dr. Mann, a psychologist, she is survived by two granddaughters.