Madam C.J. Walker -- USA
Madam C.J. Walker, an African American businesswoman, 
hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a successful line of beauty and hair care products for black women, under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.
Born Sarah Breedlove on 23 December 1867 in Delta Louisiana, to Owen and Minerva Breedlove, both were former slaves working as sharecroppers and died when Sarah was a child. At age seven, she moved in with her sister Louvina and her husband, when she was 14 years old Sarah ran away and married Moses McWilliams. When Sarah was twenty, she gave birth to their daughter Lelia, in 1885 Moses was murdered by a White lynch mob. Shortly afterwards she moved to St. Louis where three of her brothers lived. Her second marriage to John Davis ended in 1903, and she then married advertising salesman Charles Joseph Walker in 1906.
Like many women of her era, Sarah experienced hair loss, which can be attributed to stress or infrequent hair washing, which can result in scalp disease particularly at a time when most homes lacked indoor plumbing. Sarah experimented with home remedies and products already on the market until she finally developed her own shampoo and an ointment that contained sulphur to make her scalp healthier for hair growth. She gave a sample to some friends and found it successful for them as well. She realised that there were almost no hair products available for Blacks, so decided to go into business, selling hair products to Black women. Soon Sarah, now known as Madam C. J. Walker, was selling her products throughout the United States. While her daughter Lelia (later known as A'Lelia Walker) ran a mail order business from Denver, Madam Walker and her husband travelled throughout the southern and eastern states. They settled in Pittsburgh in 1908 and opened Lelia College to train "hair culturists."
In 1910 Walker moved to Indianapolis, Indiana where she established her headquarters and built a factory. She began training black women to build their own businesses, and created a chain of beauty parlours in major cities in the United States, South America, and the Caribbean. She also gave lectures on political, economic and social issues at conventions sponsored by black institutions. She joined leaders of the NAACP, then in 1918 at the biennial convention of the National Association of Coloured Woman (NACW) she was acknowledged for making the largest contribution to save the Anacostia (Washington, DC) house of slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Throughout her career she continued to donate money to the NAACP, the YMCA, and to black schools, organisations, retirement homes, orphanages, and individuals.
In 1917, she moved to her Irvington-on-Hudson, New York estate Villa Lewaro, which had been designed by Vertner Tandy, the first licensed black architect in New York State and a founding member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. Madam C.J. Walker died at Villa Lewaro on 25 May 1919 from complications of hypertension. At her death she was known to be the first self made female American millionaire and considered to be the wealthiest African American woman in America. Her daughter, A'Lelia Walker, became the president of the Madam C.J Walker Manufacturing Company.
Madam Walker was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago in 1992. The National Women's Hall of Fame, in Seneca Falls New York, the National Cosmetology Hall of Fame and the National Direct Sales Hall of Fame.
The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first woman to become a millionaire by her own achievements. On 28 January 1998, the USPS, issued the Madam C.J. Walker Commemorative stamp. On 16 March 2010, Congressman Charles Rangel introduced HJ81, a Congressional House Joint Resolution, honoring Madam C. J. Walker.
In December 2010, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a bill designating the block of 136th Street between Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) and Seventh Avenue as Madam Walker and A'Lelia Walker Place.