Two things:
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Sound on Sound had a very in depth tutorial on how to use Melodyne in the past 6-12 months, my recollection is that it mainly had a technical as opposed to creative focus, but might be worth digging it up to see if there were any pearls there for you.
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I will often sing a harmony, then hard tune it and bury it off to the side in a busy vocal section, when turned low enough in volume it is almost a subliminal harmony. Doesn’t work in “exposed” vocals, but it works great for “Bohemian Rhapsody” type things.
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Sound on Sound had a suggestion in this month’s Cubase tutorial on VariAudio which sounds intriguing: Sing a harmony, then hard tune it (as above), then use THAT as a guide vocal for a real singer to lay down a harmony line. They say it works great, I can’t wait to try it.
Parenthetically: thinking of trialing Revoice Pro 2 (synchroarts.com), youtubes make it seem like it is so incredibly powerful for harmony work. I trialed the baby version, “Vocalign” and it was utterly amazing how easy it was to match the timing of one vocal line to another … quite literally a single click of a button. Revoice Pro 2 does that, but in addition it also does doubling work. Though I think it also may generate harmonies, I’ll probably do that in VariAudio then bring it over to Revoice Pro 2 if I wind up going that route.