Whatever Happened to Ashley Tisdale?
What To Know
- Ashley Tisdale, known for her iconic Disney Channel roles, transitioned from acting to producing and music, founding Blondie Girl Productions and releasing multiple albums.
- She married Christopher French, had two daughters, and in 2025 officially changed her public name to Ashley French, aligning her business ventures like Being Frenshe with her new identity.
- Despite her business success, she remains active in entertainment, recently returning to voice Candace in the revived Phineas and Ferb and taking on various acting and panelist roles.
For so many of us who grew up with Disney Channel, Ashley Tisdale will always be Sharpay Evans, the glittering diva who starred in the High School Musical franchise. Others remember her best as Maddie on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody or as the voice of Candace, forever tattling on her brothers, in Phineas and Ferb. Now 40, she’s all grown up — but still very much in the public eye, running her own successful business and recently changing her name.
How did Ashley Tisdale get her start?
Born in 1985, Tisdale began working almost immediately, landing more than 100 commercials and touring in productions of Les Misérables and Annie throughout her childhood. By the late ’90s and early 2000s, she was popping up on shows like Smart Guy, 7th Heaven and Boston Public.
Everything changed in 2005 when she joined The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, followed a year later by her breakout as Sharpay in High School Musical. That trilogy made her a household name and eventually led to two pop albums, Headstrong in 2007 and Guilty Pleasure in 2009, both of which charted on the Billboard 200.
Disney Channel/Everett Collection
Around the same time, she took on what became one of her longest-running roles, voicing Candace Flynn in Phineas and Ferb from 2007 through 2015.
As her Disney era wrapped, Tisdale leaned into new opportunities. She founded Blondie Girl Productions in 2008 and later produced shows like the reality series Miss Advised and the long-running sitcom Young & Hungry. Acting-wise, she took on everything from the cheerleading drama Hellcats to a memorable guest stint on Sons of Anarchy. She even ventured into horror-comedy with Scary Movie 5 and earned a Daytime Emmy nomination for voicing Sabrina in Sabrina: Secrets of a Teenage Witch. Music eventually pulled her back in, and in 2019, she released Symptoms, her first album in a decade.
Walt Disney Co./Everett Collection
Where is Ashley Tisdale now?
Tisdale married musician and composer Christopher French in 2014, and the two now share two daughters, born in 2021 and 2024. For years, she used the last name Tisdale professionally and French personally, explaining that she felt torn between the name her fans knew and the name she used at home. In November 2025, she officially announced that she would go by Ashley French publicly. Her business name is also a nod to her new name: Tisdale launched Frenshe as a wellness platform before expanding it into Being Frenshe, a full fragrance, bath and body collection that debuted at Target in 2022.
Barbara Nitke/Lifetime/Everett Collection
Even with her business thriving, French hasn’t stepped away from performing. She starred on the comedy Carol’s Second Act and served as a panelist on The Masked Dancer, joining Ken Jeong, Paula Abdul and Brian Austin Green. She also made her video-game debut in 2021 as CIA officer Rachel King in The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes. Longtime fans have even more to look forward to: Phineas and Ferb was revived for a fifth season in 2025, bringing her back to the role of Candace.
She’s also blogging now about her family and experience as a mother on her website, ByAshleyFrench. A recent post about her social struggles with other new moms recently went viral; she reflected on the experience in an essay for New York Magazine.
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