The company was founded by motion picture animator Walt Disney and his businessman brother Roy in 1929 under the name Walt Disney Productions in order to incorporate the brothers' studio, which produced animated motion picture cartoons. The previous year the studio had produced the first sound animated film, “Steamboat Willie,” which introduced the character Mickey Mouse. Disney cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, and Pluto achieved wide popularity in the United States in the 1930s, and their success encouraged the company to produce Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the first feature-length animated cartoon. Snow White was followed by several other feature-length cartoons that are now regarded as classics of animation, among them Dumbo (1940), Fantasia (1940), and Cinderella (1950).

When the rising labor costs of animation in the late 1940s began to make full-length animated cartoons too expensive to produce, the Disney Company began producing nature documentaries and live-action motion pictures as well as short cartoons and live-action programs for television. In 1955 the company opened the Disneyland amusement park, which became one of the world's most famous, in Anaheim, Calif. The park had a number of sections, each devoted to a specific theme. A second and larger amusement complex, Walt Disney World, was opened near Orlando, Fla., in 1971. Besides containing the Epcot (Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow) Center and Magic Kingdom theme parks, Disney World contained hotels, resort accommodations, and sports and other recreational facilities.

The Disney corporation declined after Walt Disney's death in 1966 deprived the company of its chief innovator. The company was revitalized under new management in the 1980s, however, and its motion picture and animated-film production units became among the most successful in the United States. Touchstone Films, a company formed in 1984 to produce films different from the usual Disney type, proved especially successful with comedies and romances such as Splash (1984) and Pretty Woman (1990). The Disney Company returned to feature-length animated cartoons with The Little Mermaid (1989) and went on to make Toy Story (1995), the first full-length computer-animated cartoon.

In 1983 an unrelated Japanese corporation opened Tokyo Disneyland near Tokyo, under an arrangement whereby the Walt Disney Company received royalties from the venture. In 1992 the Disney Company itself completed the building of Euro Disneyland (later renamed Disneyland Paris) at Marne-la-Vallée, 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Paris. In 1996 the Disney corporation acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which owned the American Broadcasting Company television network. The Disney Company also operates the Disney Channel, a pay television programming service.