Parsons was born on October 8, 1966, in Los Angeles, California. In an interview for Essence in 2008, she described her parentage as biracial. Her mother, Louise Parsons, is African American from Charleston, South Carolina and her father, Kenneth B. Parsons, is British American of English and Welsh descent and from Butte, Montana. She attended Santa Monica High School.[better source needed]
Parsons starred as Hilary Banks on the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which aired on NBC from 1990 to 1996. She co-created, co-produced, co-wrote, and co-starred on the Fox sitcom Lush Life in 1996, which was later canceled after four episodes. In 2001, she starred in the critically acclaimed but short-lived television series The Job with Denis Leary. Besides television, Parsons has starred in several films, particularly in comedies such as Late Nights (1992), Major Payne (1995), and The Ladies Man (2000). Parsons is the founder of the Sweet Blackberry Foundation, which produces animated films and books about unsung black heroes. The first video in the series was about Henry "Box" Brown, a slave who mailed himself to freedom.
Parsons has also published three books for children: a middle-grade novel, How High the Moon (2019), which was loosely inspired by stories of her mother's childhood in the Jim Crow South; and two Sweet Blackberry picture-book biographies about black historical figures, illustrated by R. Gregory Christie: Flying Free (2020) about pioneering aviator Bessie Coleman, and Saving the Day (2021) about inventor Garrett Morgan.

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