Mary Kay Ash

Mary Kathlyn Wagner was born in 1918 in Hot Wells, Texas. Her father was an invalid with tuberculosis, and from the age of seven she cooked, cleaned and nursed him while her mother worked fourteen-hour days managing a restaurant. Her mother's phone advice, "You can do it", became the family creed. She married at seventeen, had three children, and when her husband came back from the war asking for a divorce she was left to support them alone.

She sold books door to door, then joined Stanley Home Products, running house parties and studying the top sellers until she outsold them. At World Gift Company she rose to national training director. In 1963, having trained a man who was then promoted above her at twice her salary, she resigned. She sat down to write a book on how a company should treat its saleswomen, and realised she had written a business plan.

Her husband George put in their 5,000 dollars of savings and agreed to handle the finances. A month before the launch he died of a heart attack at the kitchen table. Her lawyer and accountant advised her to stop. She opened on 13 September 1963 in a Dallas storefront with nine saleswomen and her twenty-year-old son Richard.

The company sold skincare through independent consultants who earned commission on their own sales and those of women they recruited, and rewarded the best with pink Cadillacs. It reached the stock market in 1968 and by her death in 2001 had hundreds of thousands of consultants. She insisted her rule was God first, family second, career third, and disliked being called a feminist, though she had spent her life proving a point about women and money.