Born in Fort Worth in 1963, Juli grew up mostly in Dallas, where her mother moved after a divorce. She attended the newly opened Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, concentrating on dance studies. After her mother, Charles Margaret DeHart, was killed in an auto accident in 1979, Juli lived with her aunt and uncle, Lou and Jesse Brooks, who were greatly influential in her life. She graduated from Granbury High School and attended Tarrant County Community College. Then she discovered her vocation in the beauty industry and enrolled in the Ogle School of Hair Design.

   Over the next 30 years she filled a range of roles - manicurist, hair stylist, sculptured nail technician - at a variety of salons and spas around Fort Worth. For seven years she served as office manager of a wholesale beauty supply company owned by her husband, Ralph Smith. Their marriage in 1993 produced what Juli often told people was her greatest accomplishment: her daughter, Hana, to whom she was a highly attentive and devoted mother.

   Juli was an avid collector, particularly of memorabilia from the "Wizard of Oz" movie. She once won an award for decorating dolls in "Oz" outfits for an auction benefiting the Salvation Army, run by the Junior Woman's Club, where she was a longtime member. She served on the board of the Parents Club at her daughter's school, Trinity Valley.  She was a member of Christ Chapel Bible Church.

   Juli also developed and maintained a wide and varied collection of friends. They ranged from school classmates to salon clients to fellow cancer patients to car collectors she met while serving as a production assistant to her television producer sister on live broadcasts of the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auctions in the years before her cancer diagnosis and treatment left her disabled. People of all sorts appreciated Juli's personal authenticity and easy good humor. Near the end of her life, scores of those friends, old and new, contributed generously to a fund set up to help her through the last months of care. Many gave selflessly of their time. One of Juli DeHart Smith's legacies is that she will be remembered as someone who brought out the best in other people.

   Survivors: Daughter, Hana Smith; sister, Jana DeHart; father and stepmother, Harold and Paula DeHart; her former husband and loyal friend, Ralph Smith; dear cousins, Susan Lair, Debbie Hartman, Jim and Wanda Fulkerson and Beverly Maley; plus numerous other cousins and their children.