Birthday: June 21, 1951
Location: Ogden, Utah, U.S.
Nationality: American
Alma mater: Brigham Young University
Occupation: Writer, Director, Producer,
Years active: 1972–present

Richard James “Rick” Rich was born in Ogden, Utah on June 21, 1951. He graduated from Ogden High School and attended Weber State College before earning a degree in music composition from Brigham Young University.

Dreaming of working at Disney’s music department, Richard left Ogden for Hollywood In 1972. Unfortunately, Disney had no openings for him. After Rick spent 3 months alternately writing letters to Disney and calling the studio from one week to the next, they relented and offered him a job in Traffic.

Disney’s Traffic Department was essentially a mailroom made up of 30 people who pick up and deliver the mail around the studio lot all day. Rich delivered mail for 18 months, meeting people throughout the studio and making connections, but the traffic department did not pay very well. Struggling to provide for his wife and young son, Richard took to giving piano lessons at the studio for extra income during his lunch breaks. The piano he’d use was in the room next to the head of the animation department, Donald Duckwall.

At about that time, studio discussions were underway about replacing a retiring Assistant Director, and they wanted someone with a knowledge of music. Duckwall suggested Rich, the young man he’d hear teaching piano through his office wall during the lunch hour.

Richard interviewed and was chosen over 25 others for the position as John Lounsbery’s Assistant Director for 1974’s Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too specifically for his musical expertise. Together, they worked on other features The Rescuers and Pete’s Dragon as well as the 1978 animated short The Small One.

Rich made his directorial debut co-directing The Fox and the Hound in 1981, becoming Disney’s youngest animated feature director. He was also one of a few animation directors at the studio who’d never worked as an animator.

After serving as a co-director on Disney’s Black Cauldron, he left Disney in January 1986 to form his own company: Rich Entertainment which became Rich Animation Studios. Richard partnered with Living Scriptures’ Jared Brown to produce half-hour animated videos based on Book of Mormon stories.

The Living Scriptures videos were successful enough to allow them to expand to New Testament stories. These were followed by stories from the Old Testament and then the Animated Hero Classics series, telling the tales of figures from history like Benjamin Franklin, Beethoven, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, and Florence Nightingale.

All along, Rick still wanted to produce feature-length animated films. He searched for a classic fairy tale to adapt for a time, before deciding upon Swan Lake. His studio became the animation industry’s third-largest company of 1994 as they produced The Swan Princess and its two direct-to-video sequels in 1997 & 1998. Richard pressed forward, directing such films as the 1999 animated feature adaptation of The King and I and 2001’s The Trumpet of the Swan, based on the popular children’s book by E. B. White.

The summer of 2003 saw the release of five more half-hour animated videos. K10C: Kids’ Ten Commandments was produced to teach the Ten Commandments’ principles to children through the eyes of a fictitious 11-year-old boy named Seth as he interacts with Biblical characters from the Bible. The series incorporated 3D animated backgrounds for its 2D animated characters.

Richard produced and directed his CGI animated feature Alpha and Omega in 2010. The comedy drama’s 7 sequels would be released regularly until 2017.

2010 was also the year Sony Pictures approached Rich about creating more Swan Princess films for DVD. His studio constructed the original 2D characters from the ‘90s as 3D models and extended the Swan Princess franchise in CGI for 9 more films. The Swan Princess: Far Longer than Forever was released in 2023.