Paris Hilton Launches a Recovery Fund

The pop culture star, advocate, and entrepreneur Paris Hilton launched an initiative Monday to support female small-business owners impacted by disasters, a nationwide expansion of her philanthropic support for women entrepreneurs after the 2025 Los Angeles fires. Hilton is donating $350,000 to kick-start the Back in Business Recovery Fund, with a goal to raise at least $1 million by the end of March. "Women-owned businesses are really the heart of so many of these communities," Hilton told the AP. "I want to be able to lift up and support them." The new initiative will be a partnership between Hilton's social impact organization 11:11 Media Impact and GoFundMe.org, the philanthropic arm of GoFundMe, which will contribute $100,000 to the fund's launch.

Hilton and those organizations deployed over $1 million in cash grants to 50 women-owned small businesses after the LA fires, which destroyed her own Malibu home. The grants of up to $25,000 went to owners of child care centers, bakeries, bookshops, dance studios, and salons damaged by the Eaton fire, which devastated the community of Altadena. The money helped cover rent, payroll, replacing equipment, and rebuilding. One year later, 90% of the grantee businesses are still operating, according to the Pasadena Women's Business Center.

Like the LA program, the Back in Business Recovery Fund will distribute unrestricted grants, partnering with some of the 150 local women's business centers spread across the US. Collaborating with the centers will help identify impacted women quickly and opens up access not just to cash, but to a community of business owners facing similar challenges, said Amanda Brown Lierman, executive director of GoFundMe.org.