Pop culture star, attorney and entrepreneur Paris Hilton launched an initiative Monday to support female small-business owners affected by disasters, a nationwide expansion of her philanthropic support for female entrepreneurs in the wake of the 2025 Los Angeles fires.
Hilton is donating $350,000 to launch the Back in Business Recovery Fund, with a goal of raising at least $1 million by the end of March.
“Women-owned businesses are really the heart of many of these communities,” Hilton told The Associated Press. “I want to be able to lift them up and support them, shine a light on them and really make a difference in their lives.”
The new initiative will be a partnership between Hilton’s social impact organization 11:11 Media Impact and GoFundMe.org, the philanthropic arm of the fundraising platform GoFundMe, and will contribute $100,000 to the fund at its launch.
Hilton and those organizations awarded more than $1 million in cash grants to 50 women-owned small businesses after a fire in L.A. destroyed her own Malibu home.
Losing the home where she was raising her young children has been “very emotional”, Hilton said, and it inspired her to think about other mothers who not only lost homes, but also lost the income to support their families.
Grants of up to $25,000 were awarded to owners of child care centers, bakeries, bookstores, dance studios and salons damaged by the Eaton fire, which devastated the community of Altadena. This money helped with rent, payroll, equipment replacement and reconstruction.
One year later, 90% of the businesses that received grants are still operating, according to the Pasadena Women’s Business Center, which also received a grant to provide technical assistance and advice to affected enterprises.
Grant recipients include Renata Ortega, who ran her floral design company Orla Floral Studio out of a converted garage next to the Altadena home she shared with her husband and three dogs.
Ortega was unsure how she would continue her business after the flames destroyed her home and studio space, including all of her floral and event equipment.
“Nothing prepares you for such a great loss,” he told The Associated Press. “I didn’t think I’d be able to get back on my feet because it took me years to build up the stuff I had.”
She was also concerned about the staff she employed and the flower market vendors who depended on her purchases.
The grant helped Ortega pay the deposit on studio space and purchase a much-needed floral cooler. Orla Floral is now “booked and busy,” she said. She was able to keep her staff and is hoping to hire another employee soon.
She credits the grant for her recent growth. “It took us straight back into business, but we’re really back and better than ever,” he said.
The support also gave Ortega a motivational boost as she faced rebuilding her home and livelihood simultaneously.
Ortega told herself, “You have to keep going and keep going and keep fighting, because if someone like Paris Hilton notices your story and thinks you’re important, then you have to believe in yourself and think you’re important too.”
Hilton also supported grant recipients as a client, proudly wearing a catsuit from apparel shop Crop It Like It’s Hot to the Coachella music festival and hiring food vendors like Carmella Ice Cream and Hot Shrimp Mama’s for her parties.
Those relationships inspired her to “think bigger” about a national initiative, Hilton said. Her life experiences as a woman, mother and entrepreneur were also similar.
Hotel magnate Conrad N. “Throughout my career, I have been underestimated,” said Hilton, Hilton’s grandson. “I’ve worked very hard to show people that there’s more to me.”
While there are 14.5 million women-owned businesses in the US, accounting for 39% according to Wells Fargo, women, and particularly minority women, receive disproportionately less investment than men through venture capital and debt financing.
11:11 “They’re the least capitalized and the least resourced, and especially if they’re also having primary care responsibilities, sometimes that adds to the burden of recovery,” said Rebecca Groen, director of Media Impact.
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.
Amanda Brown Lierman, executive director of GoFundMe.org, said collaborating with the centers will help quickly identify affected women and open up access not only to cash, but to a community of business owners facing similar challenges. “This is really the key to success.”
Brown Lierman said the decision on when to activate the fund will also be informed by reaching out to women’s business centers to assess its impacts.
Although the money will go to the owners themselves, it will have an impact on the entire community, Groen said. Saving businesses can protect jobs and tax revenue, but it can also preserve the soul of communities, drawing displaced residents back home.
“If the community isn’t thriving you don’t want to come back, so when people are rebuilding their homes, the things that are familiar and make the community feel like home are just as important,” he said.
A YouTube series named ” back in business ” was also released Monday, highlighting some of L.A.’s business owners. “I hope it really inspires others to donate and give back,” Hilton said.
Several L.A. grantees, including Ortega, will join Hilton on Monday afternoon to ring the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange, which falls on March 8, International Women’s Day.
Hilton said it would be one of her proudest moments, “demonstrating the power that women have when they come together.”
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