When I was first brainstorming ideas for what to name my personal finance website for badass women, I googled each of the possible names and potential URLs to see if they had already been claimed. I saved “the madam millionaire” for last because I really liked it and wasn’t yet prepared for the disappointment I was surely to face upon discovering this catchy and powerful name had been scooped up by someone else. Luckily for me, it wasn’t! And here we are!
But I tell you this because I want to highlight what did come up when I googled “the madam millionaire”. About the first 10 pages of the search results were articles about one Madam C.J. Walker, who holds the title of America’s first self-made female millionaire. I clicked on the first article and that’s when I knew my blog name was here to stay.
Madam C.J. Walker was a boss. She was born on a plantation in Louisiana in 1867, orphaned by age 7, and spent her childhood working in the cotton fields to get by. She went on to escape a series of abusive men and failed marriages, and worked hard to be able to afford an education for her only child, a daughter named A’Lelia Walker.
After beginning to lose her hair from poor environmental conditions that were common at the time, Madam Walker created her own scalp treatment product, after leveraging what she had learned from selling a different hair care grower from another company. She marketed this product as “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower” and began selling it door to door across the South.
(Photo courtesy of Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
Her business exploded. She built a factory and beauty school in Indianapolis and trained thousands of women to be sales agents for her products. Madam Walker was a master marketer and an even more accomplished philanthropist. She funded scholarships for women and made significant donations to the NAACP, and the black YMCA, among others.
Reading about Madam Walker’s story is incredibly inspiring and its a story I wish I knew before beginning the research for this blog. Luckily, I’m certain more people will come to know her story soon, because Mattel has just announced that they have created a Barbie doll in her honor. I ordered one for myself to serve as a reminder of this influential business woman, and all that she achieved in her lifetime by believing in her abilities and investing in her employees and her community.
I’ll continue to educate myself on Madam C.J. Walker and her remarkable story and I encourage you to do the same. I’m going to start with the Netflix series inspired by her, titled Self Made! Even though there will never be another Madam C.J. Walker, this world definitely will have more madam millionaires.