Inside Maya Angelou's Fortune: Maya Angelou's Total Wealth ( Updated) Net Worth 2026: Career Earnings & Assets

Many fans are curious about Maya Angelou's financial success in April 2026. In this article, we dive deep into the assets and career highlights.

What was Maya Angelou's Net Worth?

Early in life, Maya marched with and was friends with both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. andMalcolm X. During her career, she was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, three Grammys, and numerous other awards, and she famously read her poem "On The Pulse of Morning" atBill Clinton'sPresidential inauguration in 1993.

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother, Vivian, was a nurse, and her father, Bailey, worked as a navy dietician and a doorman. Angelou's older brother, Bailey Jr., gave her the nickname "Maya." Angelou's parents divorced when she was 3 years old, and her father put Maya and Bailey Jr. on a train to Stamps, Arkansas, to go live with his mother, Annie Henderson. When Angelou was 7, her father returned Maya and her brother to their mother's care in St. Louis, and Angelou was raped by her mother's boyfriend, Freeman, at the age of 8. Maya told Bailey Jr., and he informed the rest of the family of the crime, and though Freeman was found guilty, he only spent one day in jail. Four days after Freeman was released, he was murdered, leading Maya to become mute for nearly five years. She later said, "I thought, my voice killed him; I killed that man, because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone." Maya and Bailey Jr. were sent back to their grandmother's home after Freeman's murder. Angelou attended the Lafayette County Training School, and teacher/family friend Bertha Flowers encouraged her to speak again, stating "You do not love poetry, not until you speak it." Maya and Bailey Jr. returned to their mother when Maya was 14. By that time, Vivian had moved to Oakland, California, and Angelou attended San Francisco's California Labor School after earning a scholarship to study drama and dance. At age 16, she became the city's first Black female streetcar conductor.

After Angelou and Make split up in 1962, Maya and her son, Guy, moved to Accra, Ghana, where Guy was set to attend college until a serious car accident interfered with his plans. While living in Ghana, Angelou worked as an administrator at the University of Ghana and a feature editor for the journal "The African Review," and she became friends with Malcolm X. In 1965, Maya returned to the U.S. to help Malcolm X establish the Organization of Afro-American Unity, but he was assassinated in February of that year. Angelou then moved to Hawaii (where her brother lived), Los Angeles, and New York, and Martin Luther King Jr. asked her to help him organize a march in 1968, but he was assassinated on April 4th, Maya's 40th birthday. Later that year, Angelou wrote, produced, and narrated the ten-part documentary series "Blacks, Blues, Black!" for National Educational Television. Her first autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," was published in 1969, and she followed it with six more: "Gather Together in My Name" (1974), "Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas" (1976), "The Heart of a Woman" (1981), "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes" (1986), "A Song Flung Up to Heaven" (2002), and "Mom & Me & Mom" (2013).

In the 1950s, Maya formed the dance team Al and Rita with choreographer Alvin Ailey, and they performed at San Francisco fraternal Black organizations. She later danced  professionally in clubs around the city under the name Marguerite Johnson, but her managers encouraged her to change her name, so she went with Maya Angelou, after her nickname and her married surname (though she had divorced her husband, Tosh Angelos, by this point). In the mid-1950s, Angelou toured Europe while appearing in a production of "Porgy and Bess," and she tried to learn the language of every country she traveled to. She recorded her first album, "Miss Calypso," in 1957, and after meeting novelistJohn OliverKillens two years later, she moved to New York to focus on her writing career. Maya joined the Harlem Writers Guild and was soon published, and the following year, she metMartin Luther King Jr.and was involved in organizing the Cabaret for Freedom, which benefited the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Angelou was named the Northern Coordinator of SCLC, and around this time, she began taking part in anti-apartheid and pro-Castro activism. In 1961, she co-starred withJames Earl JonesandCicely Tysonin a production of the Jean Genet play "The Blacks." That year she also moved to Cairo with her boyfriend, freedom fighter Vusumzi Make, and worked for "The Arab Observer," an English-language newspaper, as an associate editor.

In 1972, Angelou's screenplay "Georgia, Georgia" became the first produced screenplay written by a Black woman. Over the next decade, she wrote for singerRoberta Flack, composed film scores, produced, directed, and starred in plays, and wrote poetry, autobiographies, television scripts, short stories, and more. She also becameOprah Winfrey'sclose friend and mentor during this time. In 1981, Maya moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and accepted a lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University. In 1993, she recited "On the Pulse of Morning" at Bill Clinton's inauguration, and she won a Grammy for the recording of the poem. In 1996, Maya directed the film "Down in the Delta" and collaborated with Ashford & Simpson on their album "Been Found," and in 2000, Hallmark began selling the Maya Angelou Life Mosaic Collection, which featured greeting cards and household items. In 2010, she donated memorabilia and personal papers to Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and she was a consultant for Washington, D.C.'s Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in 2011.

Maya Angelou was an American poet, author, teacher, activist, actress, and public speaker who had a net worth of $10 million at the time of her death in 2014. The author of 36 books, Angelou is probably most famous for writing the 1969 autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," which quickly became an international bestseller and is still standard reading material in many high schools.

As an actress, Angelou appeared in "Roots" (1977), "Poetic Justice" (1993), "How to Make an American Quilt" (1995), and "Madea's Family Reunion" (2006), and she received a Tony nomination for Best Featured Actress – Play for her performance in "Look Away" in 1973. Sadly, Maya passed away in May 2014 at the age of 86. When Angelou's agent announced her passing, he explained that she had recently been frail and spent time in the hospital recovering from a mystery illness.

Ultimately, Maya Angelou's financial journey is a testament to their success.

Disclaimer: All net worth figures are estimates based on public data.