Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919)

Sarah was the first in her family to be born out of slavery, at Delta, Louisiana. In 1888, she and her daughter joined several of her siblings at St. Louis and found work in a laundry. She began to suffer from severe dandruff that led to baldness which was exacerbated by the traditional harsh 'cures'. By 1905, she had invented her own line of African-American hair care products, that worked. She took to travelling from city to city promoting her goods before establishing "Madam C.J. Walker Laboratories" to manufacture cosmetics and train her sales beauticians. She in fact died worth $600,000, but her achievements under the circumstances in which she was born and lived makes her fortune greater than any privileged, male millionaire of the time. She became well-known for her philanthropy, her efforts for civil rights and as a patron of the arts.