Black Hair Disney Characters: From Snow White to Mulan (Plus the White-Haired Ones)

The very first Disney heroine had black hair. Not blonde, not brown. Snow White's name is about her skin, but her hair, in the original Brothers Grimm tale Disney adapted, is described as black as ebony. So the character who started the entire studio in 1937 was a brunette's opposite from the very beginning.

That makes black the foundational Disney hair color, even though people rarely think of it that way. And the roster that follows Snow White is loaded.

The Black Hair Disney Characters Everyone Knows

From there the black-haired princesses pile up:

Snow White

Snow White, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), is the anchor. The film was the first full-length cel-animated feature in history, a project so risky the industry nicknamed it "Disney's Folly." It worked, and her short black bob became the template for the princess line.

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Jasmine (Aladdin, 1992) wears the long black ponytail that defined the look for a generation.

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Mulan (Mulan, 1998) cuts hers with a sword in the film's most famous shot.

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Pocahontas (Pocahontas, 1995) has the longest, straightest black hair in the catalog. She is also the only Disney princess based on a real historical person, a Powhatan woman born around 1596, which the film fictionalized heavily.

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Tiana (The Princess and the Frog, 2009) brought black hair back to the princess line as the studio's first African American princess.

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Esmeralda (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1996) rounds out the group with thick black waves.

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That is five black-haired women, four of them official princesses, spanning seven decades. No other hair color holds that kind of range across the princess line.

Black Hair Disney Characters Who Are Male

The men match the women here, which is not true for most colors.

Prince Eric

Prince Eric from The Little Mermaid has jet-black hair, the rare dark-haired prince in a sea of brown ones. Li Shang in Mulan is black-haired. So is Kuzco in The Emperor's New Groove, Mowgli in The Jungle Book, and the comically vain Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas, whose tiny black pigtails are a running joke.

Black is also the villain color of choice, which is the next thing worth pulling apart.

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The Black-Haired Villains

Several of the most memorable Disney villains are defined partly by their dark hair. Jafar's slicked black look in Aladdin. Mother Gothel's huge black curls in Tangled. Yzma's severe black style in The Emperor's New Groove.

There is a reason for the pattern. Animators have long used dark, dramatic hair to read as menace, especially when it is paired with sharp angles and pale skin. Yzma and the Evil Queen from Snow White's own film are female Disney villains built almost entirely around that contrast, the dark hair against the cold face. Black hair does double duty in the catalog. It marks the founding heroines and a good share of the villains chasing them.

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White Hair Disney Characters

Now the outliers, because pure white and silver hair is its own small, strange category. The headliner crosses two lists at once.

Cruella de Vil, from One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), has the most famous hair in this entire piece: half jet black, half stark white, split straight down the middle. She belongs in the black-haired group and the white-haired group simultaneously, which is exactly the kind of design choice that makes a villain unforgettable.

The rest of the white-haired roster skews old and wise:

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What the Black Hair Disney Characters Tell You

Step back and the pattern is clear. Black hair is not a side color in the Disney catalog. It is the founding one. The studio's first heroine had it, its first African American princess had it, its only real-person princess had it, and a long line of its scariest villains had it too.

Brown may be the most common color by raw count, but black is the one tied to the most history. The most recognizable black-haired Disney characters, ranked:

1. Snow White
2. Jasmine
3. Mulan
4. Pocahontas
5. Cruella de Vil

If you came here sorting characters by hair color, the rest of the spectrum is just as telling. The ginger Disney characters are the rarest and most argued-over group in the whole catalog, and the brunette Disney characters are the grounded middle, including the one famous blonde who ends her movie as a brown-haired girl.

Then there are the blonde Disney characters, the group most people picture first when they think "Disney," even though the studio actually started in black.