At age 11, Joli left the public school system (her mother tutored her) to concentrate on her performing career appearing regularly in television commercials and talent shows.
[2] The track "Come to Me" received a boost when Joli performed it as a last-minute replacement for Donna Summer at the Beach '79 party held on Fire Island on July 7, 1979 which was attended by 5,000 gay men.
[3] "Come to Me" began a three-week reign atop the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play on September 22, 1979, and the France Joli album rose to No.
Her other TV credits included episodes of the talk shows of Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin and Dinah Shore and also a Bob Hope special.
[5] However Joli, as evidenced by her opening for the Commodores during their American tour of 1981, was still viewed as having star potential: she departed the dance music-oriented Prelude label for Epic Records.
The tracks included Joli's original "Dumb Blond" (co-written with Daniel Vail) and a remake of the Four Tops' "Standing in the Shadows of Love" which featured Gladys Knight's backing group the Pips; the latter was a moderate club success in tandem with the cuts "Girl in the 80s" and "Blue Eyed Technology" but despite a performance by Joli on Solid Gold the single "Girl in the 80s" – written by Jay Ferguson and Deborah Neal – garnered no evident mainstream interest.
However, as with Attitude, the choice for single was a Ferguson-Neal composition: the rather quirky "Does He Dance", which again failed at US radio – although it did become a Canadian airplay item – while becoming a moderate club hit boosted by a remix by Shep Pettibone.
The commercial failure of both of her Epic album releases led to the label dropping Joli, who spent the next ten years with her career focused on performing rather than recording.
The song became a regional hit in the New York tri-state area, as it was a favorite of DJs such as Jonathan Peters and Junior Vasquez at their weekly residencies.
Joli's "Come to Me" is featured in When Ocean Meets Sky[7] (2003), a documentary detailing the 50-year history of the Fire Island Pines community.