Cover Dolly Parton performing at a 2023 American football game. (Photo: Ron Jenkins via Getty Images)
Dolly Parton performing at a 2023 American football game. (Photo: Ron Jenkins via Getty Images)
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The beloved singer, actor and entrepreneur Dolly Parton, who died on August 25 from cancer, inspired generations of women through her charm, confidence, and fierce independence
Born Dolly Rebecca Parton, the fourth of 12 children in a rural Tennessee family, the American artist Dolly Parton built a career that far transcended country music. With 26 tracks reaching number one on the Billboard Country charts—a record for a female artist—including I Will Always Love You, Jolene, and 9 to 5, the scale of her empire was shaped by her distinctive blinged-out jumpsuits and sky-high wigs, as well as her business savvy and generosity.
“A rhinestone life that shone bright enough for the world to see, Dolly will forever stand as an inspiration not only through her timeless music and prolific songwriting, but also her wit, warmth, and kindness that made us all feel like family,” her representatives shared in an official statement following her death. “Dolly Parton’s legacy is one of love, kindness, and resilience.”
August 26 is Women’s Equality Day, a day that commemorates American women being given the right to vote; it seems like a particularly apt day to honour Parton. Despite publicly eschewing the label of “feminist”, she served as an enduring icon of women’s empowerment and independence.
Here are some of the biggest lessons from her life and career.
Let them underestimate you, then use it as a business advantage
Renowned for her platinum blonde wigs, bright red acrylic nails and glittering corsets, Parton famously modelled her aesthetic on women around town whom her family called “trash”—what she described as a “country girl’s idea of glamour”. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, Parton navigated a male-dominated music industry by using her hyper-feminine image as a strategic shield.
“A lot of men thought I was as silly as I looked, I guess,” she told CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2009. “I look like a woman, but I think like a man. And in this world of business, that has helped me a lot.”
Her appearance, combined with her honesty and self-deprecating sense of humour, enabled her to attract attention while pre-emptively defusing criticism. In early television appearances, she routinely beat comedic talk show hosts to the punch by taking initiative to joke about her outfits and figure—one of her best-known one-liners, or Dollyisms, was “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”
Read more: Dolly Parton’s greatest legacy was the lives she changed
Above American singer, songwriter and actress Dolly Parton in 1976. (Photo: David Redfern/Redferns via Getty Images)
American singer, songwriter and actress Dolly Parton in 1976. (Photo: David Redfern/Redferns via Getty Images)
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Whether or not you embrace the word “feminist”, gender equality is essential
Parton was an exceptionally shrewd businesswoman. At the time of her death, Forbes estimated her net worth at roughly US$450 million, built primarily on her songwriting catalogue and her stake in Dollywood, her Tennessee theme park drawing more than 4 million visitors annually. She was equally prolific as a philanthropist, with a literacy charity, the Imagination Library, that has gifted hundreds of millions of free books across the UK, the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland.
While Dolly Parton was embraced as a feminist icon, particularly for her work in the 1980 film 9 to 5 about the trials of working women—for which she wrote a theme song, featuring the typing sound of her acrylic fingernails as a beat—she never described herself as a feminist. In a 2023 interview with the BBC, she avoided the term “feminist” while endorsing its substance: “I do agree that whether you’re a man or a woman ... you should be allowed to be paid and treated with respect.”
Read more: Life lessons in business and pleasure from Samantha Jones of ‘Sex and the City’
Above Dolly Parton’s hit song, 9 to 5, the title track for the movie of the same name
Own your work, literally
As a musician, Parton’s career was anchored in absolute self-reliance and an unwavering refusal to surrender commercial control to powerful men, regardless of short-term pressure. Her debut as a solo artist came in 1974, after seven years as the featured accompaniment singer on The Porter Wagoner Show. While Wagoner publicly made snide remarks, Parton refused to engage in a feud. Instead, she wrote him a farewell song, I Will Always Love You, turning their turbulent professional relationship into a hit.
That same year, in 1974, Elvis Presley’s manager offered to have the then King of Rock and Roll record I Will Always Love You—on the condition that Parton hand over half the publishing rights, a common arrangement at the time for songwriters seeking wider exposure. Publishing rights determine who profits from a song over the long term, as licensing deals and streaming revenue accrue to the rights holder rather than the original performer.
Parton, then 28, declined. By retaining full ownership, Parton continued to earn from the song when she recorded it herself, and again in 1992, when Whitney Houston’s cover, recorded as the theme song for the blockbuster movie The Bodyguard, spent 14 weeks at No 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and became one of the best-selling singles by a female artist.
Parton later used a portion of the royalties from Houston’s version to fund a business complex in a historically Black Nashville neighbourhood. “I love the fact that I spent that money on a complex,” she told TV show host Andy Cohen on the show Watch What Happens Live in 2021. “I think, ‘This is the house that Whitney built.’”
Read more: What to know about Thai-Hong Kong actress and “Most Beautiful Woman Alive 2026” Lingling Kwong
Above Dolly Parton performing at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, England. (Photo: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage via Getty Images)
Dolly Parton performing at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, England. (Photo: Shirlaine Forrest/WireImage via Getty Images)
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Pay it forward with targeted, practical action
Parton’s philanthropy was rooted in her experience growing up in Locust Ridge, a rural community in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, where she and her family lived in a single-room cabin. In 1988, she founded the Dollywood Foundation to address secondary school dropout rates in her home county. Its flagship initiative, the Imagination Library—inspired by her father’s illiteracy—has distributed over 200 million free books to children to date.
The same approach shaped her response to crises. Following the 2016 Smoky Mountains wildfires, her My People Fund provided direct cash grants of US$1,000 per month to displaced families, bypassing standard aid application processes. In April 2020, her US$1 million donation to Vanderbilt University Medical Center supported early coronavirus research that was later credited with developing the Moderna vaccine.
Recognised with the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2022, Parton’s approach to leadership remained steadfastly results-oriented—and much like her body of work, a commitment to authenticity beyond the shine.
“I’m just a Backwoods Barbie in a push-up bra and heels,” Parton sang on her track, Backwoods Barbie. “I might look artificial, but where it counts, I’m real.”
Cat Wang is an editor at Tatler Asia based in Hong Kong, where she covers business, wealth, innovation, and impact. Previously, she was a Forbes Asia reporter and assistant editor of the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list, spotlighting startups and small companies on the rise across the Asia-Pacific. She began her career as a trainee reporter at the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s newspaper of record. Born in New York City, she graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a B.A. in political science.
