What was Maya Angelou's Net Worth? Maya Angelou was an American poet, author, teacher, activist, actress, and public speaker who had a net worth of $10 million at the time of her death in 2014. The author of 36 books, Angelou is probably most famous for writing the 1969 autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," which quickly became an international bestseller and is still standard readi...