One of the first American women of any race or rank to become a millionaire through her own efforts was Sarah Breedlove Walker. Born on a Louisiana plantation, Sarah Breedlove was "orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, a mother at seventeen, widowed at twenty." Having had a limited education as a result of her impoverished upbringing, she worked as a washerwoman for 18 years in order to support herself and her daughter. During this time, she began to go bald as a result of scalp disease--pretty common among women in that day. This led her to devise a scalp treatment to restore her hair, and the product spawned an empire...

What is inspiring to me about Madam Walker is not only the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that she overcame, but also what she did with her success--she contributed generously to black charities and encouraged her agents to support black philanthropic work. As a pioneer of the modern cosmetics industry, Madam Walker provided lucrative incomes for thousands of African-American women who would normally have been consigned to jobs as washerwomen and maids, thus furthering a profound social change.

You gotta love a woman who was born on a plantation and died in an estate that she built herself just down the street from John D. Rockefeller... --catherine j.