How Dolly Parton makes and spends her $450 million fortune

Dolly Parton wrote her first song at age 5 and played her first show at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry at 13. She released her debut album, “Hello I’m Dolly,” in 1967.

Parton has released over 50 studio albums and achieved 26 No.1 hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart. She has also lent her songwriting talents to other artists, such as Whitney Houston’s megahit “I Will Always Love You.”

When her contract with Combine Music expired in 1966, Parton founded her own publishing company with her uncle and then-manager Bill Owens, according to her official website.

This has allowed her to maintain the publishing rights to almost all of her music and receive a publishing fee anytime one of her songs is played on the radio or used in film or TV, Forbes reported in 2021.

In 1986, Parton partnered with the existing Silver Dollar City theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, to remodel and rebrand it as Dollywood. She grew up less than 10 miles away, in Sevierville, Tennessee.

“I always thought that if I made it big or got successful at what I had started out to do, that I wanted to come back to my part of the country and do something great, something that would bring a lot of jobs into this area,” Parton told the Associated Press in 2010. “Sure enough, I was lucky, and God was good to me and things happened good. We started the park and 25 years later, we’re still at it.”

The park spans 160 acres in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Dollywood remains the top tourist attraction in Tennessee with around 3 million visitors each year, according to CBS affiliate WVLT. A one-day adult ticket costs $92.

Opened in 2001, the 35-acre water park is located next to Dollywood. It operates seasonally, from May to September.

The 20-acre hotel features a shuttle to and from Dollywood and pieces of Dolly Parton memorabilia.

A chestnut “Dream Box” displayed in a glass case on the hotel’s lower level contains a recording of “My Place In History,” a song Parton wrote to be released on her 100th birthday in 2046.

Parton’s colorful collection of cookware and home decor is available at stores like Kohl’s and JCPenney.

Her “Doggy Parton” pet gear, including bandanas, wigs, and toys, is available on Amazon, and a portion of sales support Willa B. Farms animal rescue.

After releasing two Duncan Hines cake mixes in 2022, the singer expanded the line to include mixes for corn bread, brownies, and biscuits along with her coconut- and banana-pudding cakes.

The grounds of the 3,324-square-foot home include a tennis court, swimming pool, garden, and barns for livestock, the Daily Express reported.

In an interview published in the 2017 book “Dolly on Dolly,” Parton said that she and Dean would take pictures of Southern mansions in Mississippi on their annual anniversary trip and note features they wanted to incorporate into their eventual dream home.

“I knew that house before it was built and I built it long before we could afford it ’cause I knew we’d be able to — someday,” she wrote, according to an excerpt published in The New York Post. “I scouted all over Tennessee for a piece of land with hills in front and a stream around it. It’s got a bitty bridge, and I made sure it’s just narrow enough so’s no tour bus can git over it. Carl and me can walk around stark naked there and nobody’d see. We have chickens and cows and a vegetable garden. It’s a quiet, homey place for me and the special people in my life.”

It’s a far cry from her roots: Parton grew up in a two-room log cabin with her parents and 11 siblings in Sevierville. The cabin had no electricity or running water, but Parton remembered her years there fondly in her 1973 song “My Tennessee Mountain Home.”

Dollywood features a replica of her childhood home built by her brother, Bobby, and furnished by her mother, Avie Lee.

In a 2020 appearance on the Scandinavian talk show “Skavlan,” Parton said she buys most of her clothes off the rack and doesn’t splurge on designer items.

“I really like to earn money, but I love to spend it, too. But I spend it on things that I feel like that’s needed,” she said. “I’m not the kind of person that will go out and spend like three or four thousand dollars on a coat or one outfit.”

She added that the steep price tags on expensive items make her think of her parents, who “could have fed a family of 12 on what I would pay for a coat.” 

“I just give from my heart,” she said in a speech while accepting the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy in 2022. “I never know what I’m going to do or why I’m gonna do it. I just see a need and if I can fill it, then I will.”

Parton founded her Imagination Library in 1995, inspired by her father’s struggles with literacy. The nonprofit sends free books to children from birth through age 5 each month.

“This actually started because my father could not read and write and I saw how crippling that could be,” she told the Associated Press in 2022. “My dad was a very smart man. And I often wondered what he could have done had he been able to read and write.”

LeConte Medical Center opened in 2010 with the help of Parton’s philanthropy and fundraising. She also funded its Dolly Parton Center for Women’s Services and Dolly Parton Birthing Unit.

The Dollywood Foundation offers $15,000 scholarships to five high school seniors in Sevier County, Tennessee, and covers college tuition and books for its theme-park employees, CBS News reported.

A report in the New England Journal of Medicine on the development of the Moderna coronavirus vaccine acknowledged the Dolly Parton COVID-19 Research Fund among supporters of the research.

Parton qualified to get the vaccine she helped fund in Tennessee in early February 2021, but she said she wanted to wait “until some more people” got theirs.

“I don’t want it to look like I’m jumping the line just because I donated money,” she told the Associated Press. “I’m very funny about that.”

In a video of her getting the vaccine in March 2021, Parton sang a rendition of her hit song “Jolene,” changing the lyrics to sing “vaccine, vaccine,” and encouraged everyone to go get vaccinated as soon as possible.

Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm on September 26, flooding neighborhoods and leaving over 1 million homes and businesses without power.

At an October 4 press conference in Newport, Tennessee, Parton announced that she planned to donate $1 million from her personal fortune to help those impacted by Hurricane Helene and an additional $1 million through her businesses such as Dollywood and Dolly Parton’s Stampede.

“I can’t stand to see anyone hurting, so I wanted to do what I could to help after these terrible floods,” she said.

She continued, “I hope we can all be a little bit of light in the world for our friends, our neighbors — even strangers — during this dark time they are experiencing.”