This article profiles Madame C. J. Walker. Sarah Breedlove was born on December 23, 1867, the fifth of six children of Owen and Minerva Breedlove. Sarah was the first of the Breedlove children to be born after the end of slavery. Her parents died when she was six or seven years of age. At age fourteen she married Moses McWilliams, who also died in 1887 in Greenwood, Mississippi. In 1905, she married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper man, who helped her with the publicity of the products she developed between 1900 and 1905 and she adopted the name Madame C. J. Walker. In April 1919 Madame C. J. Walker became ill while traveling in St. Louis. She returned home and died on May 25, 1919 at the age of fifty-one. Not just a founder of women's hair and personal care products, Madame Walker was a pioneer of a modern thriving black hair-care and cosmetics industry and also set standards within the African-American community through her activism, philanthropy, entrepreneurship through her faith in her abilities, tenacity and perseverance. She helped to create the role of the 20th century, self-made American businesswoman and leader for the African-American community.