The world has never, ever, seen a cultural maven as unique as Deborah K. Allen (BFA ’72, DHL ’93), better known as Debbie. She has broken barrier after barrier in the performing arts, boldly putting not just her own phenomenal talent on display, but those of other artists as well. Whether she is working with well-established performers or those just beginning to step into their greatness, Allen has a singular ability to bring forth what can only be called creative magic.
She is that rare artist who is relevant in any time period. Her first Emmy win, for example, was in 1982; her latest was in 2021, 39 years later. This year, she’ll receive an honorary Oscar for her lifetime of artistry. Generations of multi-talented creatives have used her as a role model, muse, and sensei. She’s taught, mentored, and influenced scores directly and countless more she will never meet.
On any given day, Allen could be called by a multitude of titles — director, actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, producer, author, teacher, or simply superstar. Over the course of a career spanning decades, the consummate professional has been at the center of innumerable cultural phenomena, from her trailblazing starring role in the groundbreaking television and movie hit “Fame,” to her work as producer of the Oscar-nominated “Amistad,” to her turn as director of the iconic HBCU tribute show, “A Different World.” It seems every time Allen has reached the peak of her career, she reinvents herself. There is also another title important to her — Howard alumna. Allen graduated from Howard cum laude in 1971 with a BFA in classical Greek literature, speech, and theatre and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree by the university in 1993.
Allen has a reputation for being the definition of a multi-hyphenate entertainer, able to sing, dance, or act on par with any artist in modern history. It’s hard to believe that her path to Howard went through the North Carolina School of the Arts, a college that rejected her. Even though she was used as a model for others during her auditions, she was told she could not attend because she, supposedly, did not have the right type of body for ballet. Earlier, as a child, the Houston Foundation for Ballet had also told her no, before eventually making her the company’s first Black dancer. Both rejections had the tinge of racism. In fact, Allen spent part of her childhood in Mexico after her mother, Pulitzer Prize-nominated poet Vivian Ayers, relocated her children so they could experience life without the racism of the American South. In a full circle moment, the University of North Carolina School of the Arts would eventually award Allen an honorary doctorate for her excellence.
Unlike the other institutions who told Allen “No,” Howard told Allen “Yes.” In coming to Howard as a student, she followed in the footsteps of her father, Dr. Andrew Arthur Allen (DDS ’46) and older sister Phylicia Rashad (BFA ’70), who would become a multiple Tony Award winner, star of television’s number one show for successive years, and dean of Howard University’s Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts. But younger sister was never one to lurk in the shadows of others. As a Howard student, she set about making her mark on the world in one of the boldest bursts of pure talent the 158-year-old institution has seen. After her experience in North Carolina, Allen had decided to pursue other subject matters at Howard. But performing was something she just couldn’t shake. She went to an event hosted by legendary dancer and Howard instructor Mike Malone (M.A. ’67) and was simply enjoying herself, randomly dancing but using high kicks, twirls, and other forms of dance. Malone noticed her, pulled her aside, and convinced her that she could be a star. The next day, she was in his dance class, and the rest is history.
“Mike Malone saw me at a dance at a party, and he saw me do like a triple turn and kick my leg to my face,” she recalled. “He was like, ‘who is that?’ He started talking to me about his dance company and told me that he had been in Dance Magazine. Dance Magazine was a big thing when I was a kid, and I had never seen a Black man in Dance Magazine. He showed me the magazine, and I was like, ‘Wow!’ So the next day I was in rehearsal and never separated from Mike until I went away to New York, and even when I did ‘Fame,’ I brought him to choreograph an episode. He was beyond an inspiration for me and any young person that he touched.”
In fact, as she told the International Choreographers’ Organization and Networking Services (ICONS), Howard provided her first opportunity to act as a real choreographer.
“I was invited to do something in college, at Howard University, in Washington, D.C.,” she told ICONS. “I had been making up little things before, but that was the first time I ever really did something that made me understand what choreography was about.”
It didn’t take her long to make her mark after graduating from Howard in 1971, having studied Greek literature, speech, and theatre. That same year, she performed in a Broadway production of “Purlie,” based on a book by fellow former Howard student Ossie Davis, and then became principal dancer for George Faison’s Universal Dance Experience. She returned to Broadway to appear in an adaptation of “Raisin in the Sun,” before taking on the role that would define her early career — a principal cast member in productions of “Fame.”
Even as a newly-minted alumna, she inspired Howard students. She returned to The Mecca in 1977 to perform with the Jason Taylor Theatre Movement, garnering a standing ovation in Cramton Auditorium after singing and dancing to “Music and the Mirror” from the hit Broadway play “A Chorus Line,” which she had also performed on the 1977 variety series “3 Girls 3.” As reported by The Hilltop, she called Howard “her greatest experience of growth and her place of maturity.” Much of the versatility, adaptability, and determination she demonstrated in college and thereafter came from values taught to her by her mother, who died this year at age 102. Allen helps others embrace those values in advice she gives to performers.
“The advice that I would give is what kind of came to me in a very hard way from my mom, which is you have to take responsibility for whatever happens and you cannot be the victim,” she said. “It’s about staying in the race because it’s so easy to get out of it. I mean, I stepped off the track after that experience I had at North Carolina. But my mom did not let me have a pity party about what they did and what they didn’t want. She made me responsible. So, I went to Howard and everything turned around. Everything turned around. I had the most incredible professors who are still my advisers, such as Dr. Eleanor Traylor. I had the professors of life all around me and it was a gift. It was like destiny that I was not accepted to North Carolina and landed at Howard.”
Allen starred as dancer Lydia Grant in the movie and television versions of “Fame,” a story about students at a performing arts school, at a time when few Black performers were featured on either the silver or small screens. “Fame” is also where Allen put her directing skills into full gear, choreographing and directing the show’s dance scenes when the actual credited directors proved unable. Her work earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Television Series — Musical or Comedy and two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Choreography.
“You’ve got big dreams,” began her famous lines from the “Fame” opening credits. “You want fame. Well fame costs. And right here is where you start paying. In sweat.”
It was perhaps the most fitting and prescient possible debut for Allen on the international stage, because it demonstrated what would become her hallmarks — grit, determination, and an unflinching belief in her own genius and that of other artists. It was a preview of the persona that would soon be on full display for audiences all over the globe, that of an artistic force of nature who demanded the best from those she worked with, and who took the time to use her own celebrity to celebrate their artistry. Grant was in large part modeled on Allen’s own experiences; she was an insanely talented performer who was first a student and then a teacher who demanded that her students use every drop of their talent to bring forth their brilliance. In fact, not only was she portraying a teacher on the show, but she was also teaching dance to the real-life actors who portrayed her students when the cameras weren’t rolling.
“It was half, maybe 30% Lydia Grant and 70% Debbie Allen,” Allen said of her role on “Fame.” “I was dealing with a band of very talented young gypsy children — young adults who needed to be corralled and trained and directed. Every weekend, they were at my house learning the choreography. We were always rehearsing something to get ready for camera. I took on a mother or matriarch role with them. We went almost around the world. ‘Fame’ was so loved.”
Her choreography and other work on “Fame” was so respected that at times the script for the show would simply say “DWD,” which stood for “Debbie Will Determine.” The year “Fame” debuted on television, Allen again came back to Howard to be honored at its 116th Charter Day. She also took time to sit on the steps of the stage of the Ira Aldridge Theater and listen to the hopes and dreams of student artists. The former member of The Howard Players told those assembled that Howard was instrumental in her career journey.
‘’Some of your best experiences will be right here at Howard,” she told the crowd, according to The Hilltop. “Some of my most creative dances were performed right on this very stage. Howard is great for motivating the spirit.”
Just a few years after being rejected as a dancer by one college, boosted by the love she felt from Howard, Allen became arguably one of the most famous dancers in the world, and her stock has continued to rise. Since that time, she has choreographed the Academy Awards seven times and won four Emmy Awards for choreography for her work on “Fame,” Motown’s 30th Anniversary special, and Dolly Parton’s “Christmas on the Square,” a television musical she directed and choreographed and for which she also won a fifth Emmy in the Outstanding Television Movie category as one of the movie’s executive producers. She also served as a lead choreographer on films including “Forget Paris,” “A Jazzman’s Blues,” and the 2024 Netflix movie “The Six Triple Eight.”
During the Motown 30 special, Allen literally took the in-person and television audiences on a journey of dance through recorded history, showcasing African rituals, spiritual dance during American slavery, ragtime, the routines of 1960s Motown acts, and the artistry of Michael Jackson and M.C. Hammer. In a reflection of her own struggle to open the doors of dance training, she opened the show’s ballet tribute to Arthur Mitchell, founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem with a monologue likely based on her life.
“As a young girl, I had to have a great deal of imagination to picture myself as a ballet dancer, because in all of the concerts that I went to see and all of the books that I read, I didn’t see anybody dancing that looked like me,” she said.
Allen has been a go-to choreographer and producer for Motown, bringing the magic of the label’s heyday into the present. For the “Motown Returns to the Apollo” special, she produced and choreographed the “Tall, Tan, and Teasin” segment, which used contemporary dancers and singers to pay tribute to Black women who set the vocal standard over decades, including Dinah Washington, Bessie Smith, Josephine Baker, and Billie Holliday, whom Allen herself portrayed while singing “God Bless the Child.” More recently, Allen produced the 2024 Motown Christmas Special.
Her Motown moments make clear a sentiment that manifests itself throughout Allen’s body of work: She remembers. She is a consummate student of history and humanities — she studied Greek at Howard — but also has a deep appreciation for the times in which she lives. It fuels much of the passion evident in her projects. It was perhaps fate that “The Cosby Show,” starring Allen’s sister, Phylicia Rashad, would yield a spinoff based on the mythical HBCU, Hillman College. Hillman was alma mater of Rashad’s character Claire and husband Heathcliff. While the show was an instant hit, something was off. The show, which was supposed to be about an HBCU, seemed like it could have been set at virtually any college. It was missing authenticity. After visiting the set, Rashad knew that a fix was needed and knew exactly who could fix it — someone who remembered what it was like to attend an HBCU and understood its unique rhythm and culture.
In stepped Rashad’s sister, Debbie. As director and producer of the show for five seasons, she made “A Different World,” well, different from other shows. She imbued it with the trademarks of HBCU culture, from step shows to Greek-letter organizations to homecomings and marching bands. Most important, she ensured that the students and faculty at Hillman were portrayed as family who cared as much about each other as they did about their own lives, characters such as Whitley, Dwayne, Jaleesa, Kim, Freddie, Ron, Lena, Mr. Gaines, Colonel Taylor, and the one and only Charmaine Brown, portrayed by former Miss Howard Karen Malina White (BFA ’86). At times, in defiance of the powerful network and studio, Allen made sure that show discussed issues affecting young Black people, including apartheid, date rape, police brutality, and AIDS, at the time a taboo subject that no other show would touch. It showed the world that HBCU students are uniquely gifted, brilliant, fearless, and ready to be leaders in any field. The sitcom consistently ranked in the top five of all television shows for most of its run.
When “A Different World” debuted, many talented Black students were being steered away from HBCUs. The schools were stereotyped as inferior, underfunded, and “not realistic.” The only part of the stereotype that was true, wanton underfunding, made it hard for the schools to counter that narrative without large expenditures on marketing and public relations. “A Different World” filled that gap, showing that, far from inferiority, HBCUs were bastions of ingenuity and ambition where students were both challenged and nurtured as they emerged from adolescence. Whether they watched it on broadcast television, in syndication, or streaming, multiple generations have identified it as the touchpoint that made them want to attend college, and HBCUs in particular. The data backs it up. A report from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics found that annual enrollment at HBCUs increased by 26% between 1976 and 1994, but virtually all of the increase occurred during the show’s run from 1987-1993. As an HBCU graduate, Allen was uniquely qualified for her work on the series.
“I lived and breathed it,” Allen said of her HBCU experience. “I was at Howard when we took over the A [administration] building and demanded Afrocentric studies. I mean, we were so not afraid and brave and understanding that we had to stand up. I know how important the college experience is and how defining it is, not just for individuals, but also for a community, for a country. If the young population is silent, the country is in a coma. ‘A Different World’ had all the potential, but it was dealing with trivia and foolishness. There was nothing that was culturally relevant other than there was a Black school. They didn’t have the right people and they didn’t have someone in charge of the show that understood HBCUs. And so I was able to just bring my entire Howard University experience. We did a protest in the show where they took over the A building [at Hillman College] over a radio show. There was no Greek life on the show. What HBCU was that? What I brought was really freedom and a blueprint for the writers. There were some wonderful writers who did the work. And I just had to set people free. I put hot sauce on the table.”
Directing “A Different World” made her a legend behind the camera, but Allen’s knack for directing has been on stark display during most of her career. She made her credited directorial debut directing the 1984 “Dream Street” video for her fellow “Good Times” guest star, Janet Jackson. She directed 10 episodes of “Fame” and two episodes of “Family Ties,” the Thursday night “Must See TV” NBC show whose timeslot, ironically, was subsequently taken by “A Different World.” She lent her directorial talents to an incredibly diverse array of other television shows, from comedies such as “The Sinbad Show,” “The Jamie Foxx Show,” “That’s So Raven,” “Girlfriends,” “Insecure,” and “Everybody Hates Chris” to science fiction shows like “The Twilight Zone” and “Quantum Leap” to dramas like “Empire,” “Scandal,” “How to Get Away with Murder,” and “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey,” and even “dramedies” like “The Game,” in which she worked with fellow Howard alumna Wendy Raquel Robinson. Overall, she’s credited with directing over 50 television shows — and counting.
She’s equally at home as a producer, making the logistics and business decisions that bring a show to fruition. She’s produced movies, television shows, television specials, music videos, and theatre productions, in addition to 122 episodes of “A Different World.” Contemporary audiences may also recognize her work on another show in which she has been instrumental, Shondaland’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” which continues to enthrall audiences today.
Set in Seattle, “Grey’s Anatomy” chronicles the life of Dr. Meredith Grey and the community of health care professionals and patients at the hospital where she works. The wildly popular show has been a network television staple for 22 seasons and is ABC’s longest-running scripted primetime show. Allen has been instrumental in the show’s success, serving as executive producer for more than 200 episodes and director for 43 episodes. Since 2011, Debbie Allen has also appeared as an actor in almost 100 episodes, portraying Dr. Catherine Fox Avery, a complicated urologist and philanthropist who is mother to one of the hospital’s chief doctors and eventually engineers the purchase of the hospital where her son and Grey work. Allen soars in the role, where she is frequently tasked with showing multiple sides of humanity, portraying her character as a brilliant surgeon, a nurturing parent, a manipulative lover, and an ambitious and controlling matriarch. Her work on the show earned her a NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. This year, the show has been renewed for a 23rd season, with Allen returning to serve as executive producer.
While it is impossible to pigeonhole Allen in racial terms, she certainly hasn’t shirked from using her talent and industry influence to bring visibility to the triumphs and tragedies of the experience of African descendants in America. She portrayed Alex Haley’s wife Nannie in “Roots: The Next Generation” and served as producer and director of “One Day,” a television movie chronicling the life of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (LLD ’57). She also directed the music video for the 1990 rendition of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” the Negro National Anthem. In 1986, as King’s birthday became a national holiday, she gave an incredibly moving nationally televised song and dance performance embodying the persona of Coretta Scott King, using her artistry to demonstrate the determination, pain, and sacrifice of the civil rights heroine.
Perhaps most notably, Allen worked for years to bring “Amistad” to movie theaters around the world, showing the horrors of the Middle Passage and American slavery through the eyes of Africans abducted from their native land and brought to the United States on the slave ship La Amistad. The captured Africans eventually win their freedom. Allen worked for nearly two decades to produce the movie, enlisting the legendary Steven Spielberg as director and co-producer after fighting for years to get Hollywood to greenlight the project, which no studio would initially back. The film received critical praise and generated multiple Oscar and Golden Globe nominations.
After so many studios refused to make the film, the acclaim vindicated Allen’s tenacity. She returned to Howard to screen the film before its wide release and had some honest words to share with the Cramton Auditorium audience.
“I was so angry, so outraged, I was going to slap somebody,” said Allen to the audience, according to The Hilltop. “I couldn’t believe that so blatantly they thought this was unimportant.’’
Years later, Allen is still extremely proud of the movie. She is also still astounded that it took so long to make, and even more astounded that it took her so long to even hear about the story. She told Howard Magazine that the spark to create the movie came after a visit to Howard.
“History was my most loved subject,” she said. “It was what I love more than anything, which is why I was devastated when I went to the Howard University Bookstore and bought a collection of essays by Black academicians, politicians, and religious leaders. The Amistad story was told in the preface of the book, and it was a story I was never taught in school. And I was determined to make it a movie, and that’s what happens when I’m determined. I don’t quite give up. It took, like, 18 years to get it done, but that sense of our lineage is our connection to who we are today to each other and to this country. This is our country. It’s been my life’s work to be connected and to teach. So ‘Amistad’ was a result of my love for history and books and Howard University.”
It takes imagination to envision a form of creativity Allen hasn’t tackled. In addition to dancing and acting, she released two vocal solo albums, 1986’s “Sweet Charity” and 1989’s “Special Look.” She provided the voice for Suga Mama’s cousin Myrtle in the animated show, “The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder.” She’s even authored books featuring young dancers, including “Brothers of the Knight” and “Dancing in the Wings,” about a young girl whose talent, like Allen’s, was initially overlooked.
Allen has been nominated for two Tony Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and 22 Emmy Awards. She won five Emmys for choreography and production and earned a Golden Globe for acting. She has five NAACP Image Awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She is also one of the fewer than 25 people to win the Governor’s Award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, joining the likes of icons like Johnny Carson and Bob Hope for making “a profound, transformational, and long-lasting contribution to the arts and/or science of television.” The accolades don’t stop there. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that Allen will receive an honorary Oscar in November 2025, along with Tom Cruise, Dolly Parton, and Wynn Thomas, for her five decades as a movie choreographer, actor, and producer. The Howard alumna was a 2020 Kennedy Center Honoree, widely considered to be America’s highest artistic recognition, who the center described as a “multi-disciplinary artist, choreographer, and actress,” who “moves seamlessly through artistic disciplines and is a cultural ambassador for all.” Allen has served as an artist-in-residence at the center for more than 15 years.
Allen has given to the world in so many ways through her impact on culture, but she has also found other ways to make a difference. She helped set Howard’s governing direction as a member of the Board of Trustees from 1998-2004 and again from 2011-2017. For decades, she and sister Phylicia Rashad have funded a scholarship for a Howard student in the name of her father. Chosen by Rashad and Allen directly, recipients include students who are “triple threat” performers who, like Allen and Rashad, can sing, act, and dance, such as Taraji P. Henson (BFA ’95, DHL ’22), who would go on earn a Golden Globe Award and star in hit movies and television shows such as “Baby Boy,” “Empire, “Hustle & Flow,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Hidden Figures,” and “The Color Purple,” and Wendy Raquel Robinson (BFA ’89), who would become an NAACP Image Award Winner and star in “The Steve Harvey Show,” “The Game,” and a host of other productions. In 2025, the award was presented to Howard student Trinity Garrison live on NBC’s “The Today Show” by Rashad and Henson.
She also has a school of her own, the Debbie Allen Dance Academy, which she co-founded with her husband Norm Nixon. Along with Allen’s daughter Vivian Nixon Williams, who serves as the program’s executive director, the academy focuses on enriching lives through the arts, with a special focus on disenfranchised Black and Latino communities. The academy also runs the Debbie Allen Middle School, a private school for aspiring young dancers in grades six to eight designed to foster a lifelong love of learning through quality training in academics, dance, and theatre arts.
Young people are important to Allen, but so are older aspiring dancers. She created a program which resulted in a concert featuring 60 to 90-year-olds. She also created a program for cancer patients, and after the 2025 rash of fires in California, she started “Dancing in the Light,” which brought communities back together through dance. Ultimately, she said, she just goes where she sees the need.
At age 75, when you have made your mark in as many different roles, genres, stages, platforms, and screens as Allen, what’s next? New challenges, of course! In addition to her work on “Grey’s Anatomy,” Playbill has reported that she will direct Cedric the Entertainer and Henson in a production of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” on Broadway in 2026. She’s working on a project to direct and choreograph a stage version of Disney’s film “Polly,” which she also directed. She’ll also be seen starring in the soon-to-be released films “Silent Rhythm” and “Splinter.”
“What drives me is the opportunity to be creative in a new realm,” she said.
Allen is also slated to produce a pilot for an “A Different World” reboot on Netflix. While in D.C. to scout talent for the show this year, she chose a familiar setting for the auditions: the Ira Aldridge stage where she came into her own as a world-class performer. Even after she has accomplished so much, Allen is still looking for her next opportunity. In the documentary, “Seen and Heard: The History of Black Television,” streaming on HBO Max, she explained why.
“Overcoming is not a journey,” she said. “It is a destination.”
Article ID: 2341