MCE WOMEN’S BUSINESS CENTER  |  OCTOBER 2026 NEWSLETTER

Florence Price

Composing Her Own Path to Success

A pioneering American composer offers lasting lessons in originality, resourcefulness and believing in the value of your own voice.

October is National Women’s Small Business Month, a time to celebrate women who turn their talent, determination and vision into something meaningful. Although Florence Price built her career in music rather than business, her remarkable life offers enduring lessons for every woman pursuing an entrepreneurial dream.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1887, Florence Beatrice Smith Price showed extraordinary musical ability from childhood. She gave her first piano performance at age four and later attended the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music, where she studied organ, piano and composition.

Price possessed tremendous talent, but talent alone could not overcome the racial and gender barriers of early 20th-century America. As a Black woman working in the predominantly white, male world of classical music, she frequently struggled to have her compositions published, performed and taken seriously.

She also faced financial and personal hardships. After relocating to Chicago and becoming a single mother, Price used her skills in many different ways to support her family. She taught piano from her home, played the organ for silent films and reportedly composed music for radio advertisements under a pen name. Like many modern entrepreneurs, she adapted, diversified her income and continued developing her most important work even when recognition was slow to arrive.

Her breakthrough came after she entered several compositions in the 1932 Rodman Wanamaker Music Contest. Her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor won first prize. On June 15, 1933, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed the work at the Century of Progress World’s Fair. With that performance, Price became the first Black woman to have a composition presented by a major American orchestra.

Price ultimately composed more than 300 works, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music, songs, spiritual arrangements and pieces for piano and organ. She created a distinctly American musical language by weaving African American spirituals, blues-inspired harmonies, syncopated rhythms and the lively pulse of the traditional Juba dance into European classical forms. Rather than setting aside her heritage to fit the expectations of the concert hall, Price made it central to her art. The result was music of great beauty and sophistication that broadened the very idea of what an American symphony could sound like.

Her career reminds women entrepreneurs of several powerful truths: use every skill you possess, find more than one path forward, build relationships with people who recognize your potential and never assume that a closed door means your work lacks value. Sometimes the marketplace – or the world – takes time to recognize an original idea.

Today, Florence Price’s music is being performed and recorded by leading orchestras around the world. Her story is not simply one of perseverance. It is the story of a woman who understood the value of her own voice and continued creating until others finally learned to hear it.

During National Women’s Small Business Month, may her example encourage every woman with a dream: believe in the value of what you have to offer, remain open to new opportunities and keep composing your own path to success.

Photo and Editorial Notes

Photo credit: Florence Price, date unknown. Public-domain image via Wikimedia Commons.

Fact-checking references: Chicago Symphony Orchestra; University of Arkansas Florence Price Collection