Tina Knowles Is Finally Telling Her Story—And Her Famous Family Stands Behind Every Word

Tina Knowles, the woman who raised two of music’s most influential voices, is stepping into the spotlight to share her own story — and this time, it’s all hers.

In her new memoir Matriarch, Knowles opens up in a way she never has before, tracing her life from growing up as a young Black girl in segregated Galveston, Texas, to becoming a celebrated entrepreneur, a mother, and a cultural cornerstone in her own right. The book is deeply personal — filled with family history, hard-earned wisdom, and the kind of honesty that makes it clear this isn’t about celebrity gossip. It’s about legacy.

The decision to go public didn’t come lightly. “I started recording my life for my grandchildren,” Knowles explained. She hadn’t planned on writing a book — at first, it was just about leaving something behind. “But when I told the story about how my parents got run out of Louisiana and got to Texas, it was compelling.” Slowly, that private archive turned into something meant for all of us.

What makes Matriarch powerful is its scope. It isn’t just a story about being Beyoncé and Solange’s mother — it’s about surviving poverty and racism in the Deep South, running a salon at a time when Black female entrepreneurship was rarely celebrated, and navigating womanhood with resilience and vulnerability. She talks about painful chapters, including her 2011 divorce, and her more recent breast cancer diagnosis — not for sympathy, but so other women might catch what she almost didn’t.

There are also the intimate glimpses into her daughters’ rise — from ferry rides with Destiny’s Child to shopping trips that fame eventually made impossible. “We used to have so much fun,” she said of Beyoncé. “That was our thing — to all go shopping together. We can’t do that anymore.”

But even amid all the personal revelations, Tina made sure her family came first. “I sent the book to my kids and said, ‘If there’s anything you’re not comfortable with, I’ll take it out.’” To her surprise, they were fully supportive.

She’s now back in the beauty world, helping develop Beyoncé’s new hair-care line Cécred. She’s not just an advisor — she’s in the salon, doing hair, connecting with people, rediscovering the part of herself that existed long before her daughters became household names.

What started as a way to preserve her family’s oral history has turned into a defining chapter of its own. Matriarch isn’t just Tina Knowles’s story — it’s a piece of American history, told by a woman who lived it.