In the retiring 20 years , the act of women - owned businesses hasrisen114 percent . But female entrepreneurship is n’t just a trademark of the modern geological era : Since as early as the 17th hundred , womanhood have been forging their own way of life in a variety of trades . From merchants to ironmasters to seamstress , these historical women shattered glass ceilings and broke stereotypes to uprise to the top of their industries .
1. Margaret Hardenbroeck
When 22 - year - old Margaret Hardenbroeck arrive in New Amsterdam ( later New York ) from the Netherlands in 1659 , she was ambitious and ready to figure out . She already had a job lined up — collectingdebtsfor a cousin ’s business organization . She continued to operate even after she married the wealthy merchant Pieter de Vries , this clock time as a business agent for several Dutch merchandiser . She sold small goods like cooking petroleum to the colonists , and grease one’s palms fur to institutionalize to Holland .
When Peterdiedin 1661 , Hardenbroeck inherit his estate of the realm and took over his business . She dilate her pelt shipping operation in Holland , trading the furs for ware to sell back in the colonies . For the Dutch , it was not wholly unusual for char to run clientele on adequate footing with man ; in New Amsterdam , they sometimes called themselvesshe - merchants . Hardenbroeck would become the most successful and wealthiest she - merchant in the settlement .
Eventually , she was able to purchase her own ship , theKing Charles , and collect substantial the three estates holdings throughout the colonies . Ever the savvy businesswoman , Hardenbroeck ensured that her riches , properties , and independence were protected when she married her second husband , Frederick Philipse , by select anususmarriage under Dutch law . That meant she rejected marital safekeeping of her husband and communal property , keep all that was hers prior to matrimony . When Hardenbroeck die in 1691 , she was the affluent cleaning woman in New York .
2. Rebecca Lukens
In 1825 , 31 - yr - one-time Rebecca Lukens found herself a widow and the new owner of Brandywine Iron Works and Nail Factory . The Pennsylvania - based party had been start by Lukens ’s fatherIsaac Pennockin 1810 , leased to her husbandCharles , and finally left to her after both piece died only a year apart . As rare as it was at the time for a women to be an ironmaster , and despiteobjectionsfrom her own fellowship , Lukens take over and conduct the company into a Modern epoch of innovation and industriousness .
Under her husband ’s leadership , Brandywine Iron Works had harnessed the demand for steam power by producing wander Fe plate for steam engines . Lukens uphold this line of production and propelled Brandywine to become the lead manufacturer of boilerplate . But she see another chance for iron when the Philadelphia & Columbia Railroad , one of the first commercial-grade railways in the U.S. , launch in the mid-1830s , and she begin seeking out commissions to produce iron for locomotive .
Even in the thick of the fiscal crisis of the Great Panic of1837 , Brandywine proceed to tramp out smoothing iron , and when patronage was moribund , she sustained her employees by putting them to work maintaining and updating the mill . When she could n’t make up them with money , she paid them with food . Her foresight and willingness to seek out raw opportunities continue Brandywine afloat when other ironworks give way , and her business concern emerged from the Panic as the most prominent ironworks company . Lukens herself is remember as the first womanCEOof an industrial company , and one of the first female ironmasters in the US .
3. Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley
Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was one of Washington , D.C. ’s most popular 19th 100 modiste — but it was a long and difficult road to financial independence and recognition . yield into slavery in Virginia in 1818 , Keckley was moved from plantation to plantation . learn sewing by her seamstress mother Agnes Hobbs , Keckley used this accomplishment while still a teenager to build a patronage , making garb for both livid women and freed mordant women . While much of the money that she made from her dresses went to the family line who owned her , some of her loyal clients loaned her the $ 1200 she needed to buy her and her Logos ’s exemption . Keckley worked to pay back all the patrons who helped her buy her freedom before strike to Washington , D.C.
In D.C. , password of her natural endowment reached Mary Todd Lincoln . The first dame took Keckley on as her personal designer — and airless personal friend . Keckley designed almost all of Mary ’s gowns during her prison term in the White House , including thedressshe wore at Lincoln ’s 2nd inauguration , now on display at the Smithsonian . As a seeable and well - honour free black woman , Keckley also founded the Contraband Relief Association ( later the Ladies ’ Freedmen and Soldiers ’ Relief Association ) , an arrangement that rear money and provided food and wearable for smutty people and wound Union soldiers .
Keckley ’s success in D.C. end , however , shortly after she publish an 1868autobiography — Behind the Scenes , Or , Thirty geezerhood a Slave and Four Years in the White House . Mary saw the sections about her and the White House as a betrayal of confidence , and ended their friendship . The ripple effect ruined Keckley ’s repute in D.C. In the backwash , she was offer a berth at Wilberforce University in Ohio as head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts , which she accepted . Keckley also organized the dress showing at the 1893 Chicago World ’s Fair . She died in 1907 .
4. Lydia Estes Pinkham
Lydia Pinkham reputedly came into possession of a unavowed medicative recipe when her hubby Isaacacceptedthe pattern in lieu of money owed to him . The recipe contained five main herb — pleurisy root , life root , Trigonella foenumgraecum , unicorn root , and black cohosh — and alcohol . Pinkhman brewed her first pot of the soon - to - be - famousVegetable Compoundon her range , and just three years later , she launch the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Co. , a plate remedy business run by and for women .
Pinkham claimed that her Vegetable Compound could cure a spectrum of female - specific ailments , from menstrual problems to a prolapse uterus . She start out small , first distributing her chemical compound to neighbors and friends , but in the thick of the financial crisis of 1873 — when her husband was break — she begin selling it and publish female health pamphlets to go alongside it . Her three sons helped her package , mart , and sell the chemical compound , and the strategical advertising hunting expedition they implemented waskeyto the business ’s success . She was the first woman to put her ownlikenesson her ware , which helped create make loyalty and spoke to her aim interview : char . Eventually , she was able to lucubrate her business beyond the U.S. and into Canada and Mexico .
There is lilliputian grounds proving the medical efficaciousness of Pinkham ’s Vegetable Compound , and she is often lumped into the quackery family along with century of other 19th C patent practice of medicine producers . But she was also addressing a demand for women - centered wellness care , which was often poor at the time . To find alternative method acting of care , and void dangerous , expensive Dr. sojourn , fair sex often change state to home remedy — like Pinkham ’s compound .
5. Madam C.J. Walker
BornSarah Breedloveon a Louisiana grove on December 23 , 1867 , Walker was the daughter of Owen and Minerva Anderson , free Negroid who both die by the meter she was 7 . She was married at 14 , and before long feed birth to one daughter , Lelia . After her husband died only six years into their marriage ceremony , Walker moved to St. Louis , where she worked hard as a washwoman and cook , hoping to allow a life free from poverty for Lelia .
In 1904 , Walker began working as a sales agent for Annie Turnbo Malone ’s hair care fellowship — and presently came into some inhalation of her own . As the story goes , she had a dream in which a piece told her the ingredients for a hair’s-breadth - growing tonic . Walker re - created the tonic water and began sell it door - to - door . After she married Charles Joseph Walker in 1906 and renamed herself Madam C.J. Walker , she launch Madam Walker ’s Wonderful Hair Grower , a line of tomentum guardianship for pitch-dark cleaning woman .
Walker build up a business that was clear $ 500,000 a class by the time she died , while her individual financial worthreached$1 million . Yet it is n’t the wealth alone that earn Walker a long-lived bequest — it was how she used that wealthiness for a large social good . Within her company , she condition over 40,000 black women and men and urge for the economical independence of calamitous hoi polloi , particularly bleak woman . She financially supported dark students at the Tuskegee Institute , and contributed the tumid recorded single donation , of $ 5000 , to the NAACP , to stomach anti - lynching initiatives .
6. Annie Turnbo Malone
Though Madam C.J. Walker is often recognized as the first pitch-dark woman millionaire , some historians say that creditbelongsto Annie Turnbo Malone , the woman who rent Walker to deal her Wonderful Hair Grower in St. Louis before Walker pop her own company . Like Walker , Malone ’s parents were former slave who exit when Malone was young . Her old baby Peoria raised her , and together , they begin experimenting with hair care .
pilus fear products for inglorious women were not widely produce , and the chemical solution that were used often damaged hair . Malone developed her own chemical straightener around the turn of the century , and soon had create an entire melody of other products for shameful women ’s hair . In 1902 subsequently , she moved toSt . Louisand , along with three assistants , sold her hair care line threshold - to - room access . She expand the party rapidly , advertising in newspapers , traveling to give demonstrations at dim churches , and even selling her line at the 1904 World ’s Fair . In 1906 , Malone trademarked her products under the name Poro , and in 1918 , she build Poro College , a multi - story building that housed her business offices , training power , operations , and a kind of public gathering space for the local dark community . Malone even franchised retail outlet throughout North and South America , Africa , and the Philippines , utilize over 75,000 women worldwide .
Malone ’s companionship was worth millions , and she continuously used her money to meliorate the lives of those around her , either by hiring cleaning woman or donate to colleges and organizations around the country . She made $ 25,000 donations to both Howard University Medical School and the St. Louis Colored YMCA . She donated the nation for the St. Louis Colored Orphans ’ Home and raised most of their construction costs , then served on their card from 1919 to 1943 . In 1946 , the orphans' asylum was renamed in her honor , and it is still operational today as the Annie Malone Children and Family ServiceCenter .
7. Mary Ellen Pleasant
When Mary Ellen Pleasant moved to San Francisco in 1852 she was flee the South , where she had been accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Law of1850 . Pleasant had , in fact , broken the law — which punish anyone who help people escaping slaveholding — as a member of the Underground Railroad , along with her first hubby James Smith . For four years , Pleasant and Smith helped escaped slave find Modern homes in devoid commonwealth and Canada , and when Smith died only four class after their spousal relationship , Pleasant continued the oeuvre with a considerable inheritance from him .
When Pleasant make a motion to San Francisco in 1852 amid Gold Rush febricity , she ab initio worked as a cook and housekeeper , but also began invest in stock and money market , and impart money to miners and other business community in California ’s surge economy ( at interest , of course ) . Pleasant was successful enough that she became a philanthropist , and go on her abolitionist work by lodging escaped slaves and come up them jobs .
In 1866 , Pleasant brought a civil right example against the North Beach Mission Railroad Company , which refused to peck up sinister passengers . She won . Her success in court , as well as in continuing the Underground Railroad through her business , have earned her the title themotherof California ’s civil rightfield motility .
By this time , Pleasant had conglomerate a sizable fortune and was weigh one of the loaded cleaning woman in America . But many people in white society saw her only as a calamitous stereotype , and dubbed herMammy Pleasant — a title she hat . She ended up being dragged into a serial of scandal and court of justice case connected to wealthy men , accused of being both a stealer and manslayer . Financially run out and emotionally exhausted , she was forced to give up her home . The smear effort also greatly diminished her fortune and report in her prison term , but the legacy of her basal life story has not been lose . In 2005 , the urban center of San FranciscoproclaimedFebruary 10 Mary Ellen Pleasant Day in her honour .
8. Olive Ann Beech
From an early age , Beech have intercourse how to make out finance . carry in 1903 , she had her own savings bank business relationship by the age of 7 , and by 11 she had choose on the unusual childhood responsibility of keeping track of her family ’s accounts . Already with a mind for business and finance , Beech enter in a business college in her rest home state of Kansas , where she study stenography and bookkeeping . After college , she took a position in 1924 as a bookkeeper for Travel Air ManufacturingCompany , a young commercial and passenger aviation company .
Beech was fundamental to the company ’s growth , managing its correspondence , records , and fiscal dealings , and the organization quickly became the world ’s largest commercial aircraft producer . In a brusk time , she was advance to office staff manager , and eventually became personal secretary to Walter Beech , one of Travel Air ’s co - founders . Their solve relationship became much more , and they conjoin in 1930 . As partners , they take shape Beech Aircraft Company , and when Walter pass grim for a few calendar month , Beech deal over . With the onset of the U.S. ’s entry into World War II , Beech Aircraft boom out , building over7400military aircraft over the course of the war .
When Walter conk in 1950 , Beech became president — the first adult female president of a major aircraft company . She then took the company into the Space Age , establishing a enquiry and ontogeny facility that render NASA with cryogenic systems , cabin pressurizing equipment for the Gemini programme , and parts for theApollomoon flights and Orbiter bird . Under Beech ’s leadership , the company ’s salestripled .
In 1980 , Beech Aircraft merged with Raytheon ; Beech remain on as chair of Beech Aircraft and was elect to Raytheon ’s board of directors . Though Beech never piloted an aircraft herself , she was award the Wright Brothers MemorialTrophythat same yr — the first woman to have the honour — for"five decades of outstanding leaders in the development of general aviation . "
