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Talia Lakritz
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Forbes estimated in 2022 that Dolly Parton has amassed a $375 million fortune.
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 and skyrocketed to country superstardom with songs like "Jolene" and "9 to 5."
Her many accolades include spots in the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Living Legends Medal from the Library of Congress, Kennedy Center Honors, a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, and 10 Grammys.
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About one third of her fortune comes from her music catalog, which is worth an estimated $150 million, according to Forbes.
Parton has released 52 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."
In a 2021 profile of Parton, Forbes estimated the value of her song catalog to be $150 million.
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Parton still owns nearly all of the publishing rights to her music, reportedly earning between $6 million and $8 million in royalties every year.
When her contract with Combine Music expired in 1966, Partonfounded her own publishing company with her uncle and then-manager Bill Owens. 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.
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Dollywood, her theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, is her biggest financial asset.
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.
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Parton's 50% stake in the theme park is worth about $165 million, Forbes reported in 2021.
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 $89.
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Parton also co-owns the DreamMore Resort and Spa with a stake worth $15 million.
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.
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Her lines of housewares, Duncan Hines cake mixes, and "Doggy Parton" pet apparel provide additional revenue streams.
Parton's colorful collection of cookware and home decor is available at stores like Kohl's, Target, 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, Insider's Anneta Konstantinides reported.
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While she wears elaborate bedazzled outfits for public appearances and performing onstage, Parton is more frugal when it comes to her everyday clothes.
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."
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Parton is renowned for her generous charity work through The Dollywood Foundation, which she founded in 1988.
"I just give from my heart," she said in a speech while accepting the Carnegie Medal of Philanthropyin 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."
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She gives away around 2 million books to children each month through the foundation's Imagination Library.
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."
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She continues to invest in her hometown, funding a new medical center and scholarships for students in her old high school.
LeConte Medical Centeropened 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, according to CBS News.
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Her $1 million gift to Vanderbilt University in 2020 proved integral to the development of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine.
A report in theNew 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.
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