Madam C.J. Walker was one of the first American women to become a self-made millionaire, rising from an uneducated daughter of sharecroppers to a savvy businesswoman and philanthropist.
Born on a cotton plantation to recently freed slaves in 1867, Sarah Breedlove — who later went by the name Madam C.J. Walker — built her fortune selling hair care products for African-American hair.
Orphaned by age 7, she married at age 14 to escape her abusive brother-in-law. Widowed at 20, she moved to St. Louis to join her brothers, who were barbers.
After suffering from a condition in the 1890s that caused her to lose most of her hair, Sarah Breedlove developed her first product after experimenting with homemade and store-bought remedies. She changed her name to Madam C.J. Walker on the advice of her third husband, Charles Walker, and started her own business selling Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula.
She sold her products door-to-door throughout the south and southeast before moving to Pittsburgh in 1908 to open Lelia College in order to train "hair culturists." By 1910, she had moved to Indianapolis where she built a factory, hair and manicure salon, and another training school.
Walker continued to expand in the U.S. and overseas in the Caribbean before moving to New York in 1916 and leaving the day-to-day operations of the business.
By the time she died in 1919, Walker was the sole owner of her business, which was valued at more than $1 million, according to Biography.com; her personal fortune was estimated at between $600,000 and $700,000.
