Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on 23 December 1867 on the Delta, Louisiana, plantation where her parents had been enslaved, the first child in her family born into freedom. Orphaned at seven, she worked in the cotton fields and later as a laundress in St. Louis before developing hair care products of her own; after marrying Charles Joseph Walker in 1906, she marketed herself as “Madam C. J. Walker”.
Through the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company she built her fortune selling cosmetics and hair care products for Black women, and the Guinness Book of World Records lists her as the first woman in America to become a self-made millionaire. She gave to organisations such as the NAACP, campaigned against lynching, and died on 25 May 1919 in Irvington, New York, where she had built her estate, Villa Lewaro.