Madam C. J. Walker: How a $1.25 Investment Built a Million-Dollar Business

Kylie Jenner is known today for a multimillion-dollar fortune in cosmetics. One hundred years earlier, the original self-made queen of cosmetics died: Madam C. J. Walker, who started with a $1.25 investment and was, at her death in 1919, one of the wealthiest businesswomen in America, with a net worth estimated at one million dollars. She is considered the first American businesswoman to amass that much. Her life is inspiring, and it shows a sharp understanding of business and economics.

From washwoman to entrepreneur

The decisions that built a fortune

• Building a brand. When she moved her business to Denver, Sarah Breedlove changed her name to Madam C. J. Walker, to help establish her brand.
• Betting on herself. When she incorporated in 1910 she could not find outside investors — so she invested $10,000 of her own to buy 100% of the stock in the Walker Manufacturing Company.
• Starting small. Her business began with $1.25 of her own money and her own experiments, while she still earned $1.50 a day doing laundry.

That is why she is called a self-made millionaire: she raised the capital, owned the company outright, and built its name herself.

The brand at work: an advertisement in The New York Age, January 17, 1920 — a year after her death, her name and face still sold the company's creams, hair grower and face powder. Library of Congress.

A story for the classroom

The National Park Service tells Walker's story as a ten-minute economics and financial-literacy resource. Students are interested in money and in how people build wealth, and her life puts the vocabulary of business — entrepreneur, investment, stock, start-up, corporation, net worth, brand — into a story that, the resource suggests, also raises the question of what institutional racism and sexism she likely encountered along the way.

Sources

Based on "Using Historical Figures to Teach Economics & Financial Literacy: Madam C. J. Walker, Entrepreneur," written by Paul LaRue for the National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The original draws on:

• Rita Koman, "Reading #1: Meet Madam C. J. Walker," in Two American Entrepreneurs: Madam C. J. Walker and J. C. Penney, National Park Service, Teaching with Historic Places.
• Henry Louis Gates Jr., "Madam Walker, the First Black American Woman to Be a Self-Made Millionaire," PBS.
• "Madam C. J. Walker," Biography.com.

For more, see the National Park Service's "Madam C. J. Walker: African American Millionaire, Philanthropist, Activist."