 Alan Menken and Howard Ashman 's song " Beauty and the Beast " won the Academy Award for Best Original Song , while Menken 's score won the award for Best Original Score . Two other Menken and Ashman songs from the film , " Belle " and " Be Our Guest " , were also nominated for Best Original Song . Beauty and the Beast was the first picture to receive three Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song , a feat that would be repeated by The Lion King ( 1994 ) , Dreamgirls ( 2006 ) , and Enchanted ( 2007 ) . Academy rules have since been changed to limit each film to two nominations in this category , due to the consecutive unintentional failures of Dreamgirls and Enchanted to win the award . The film was also nominated for Best Sound and Best Picture . It was the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture , and remained the only animated film nominated until 2010 , when the Best Picture field was widened to ten nominees , and it is the only animated film nominated for the award when it had five nominees . It lost the Best Picture award to The Silence of the Lambs . It became the first musical in twelve years to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Motion Picture of the Year following All That Jazz ( 1979 ) and the last one to be nominated until Moulin Rouge ! ( 2001 ) , ten years later . With six nominations , the film currently shares the record for the most nominations for an animated film with WALL @-@ E ( 2008 ) , although , with three nominations in the Best Original Song category , Beauty and the Beast 's nominations span only four categories , while WALL @-@ E 's nominations cover six individual categories . While The Little Mermaid was the first to be nominated , Beauty and the Beast became the first animated film to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy . This feat was later repeated by The Lion King and Toy Story 2 . 
