Anita Lucia Roddick (1942–2007,) née Perella, was a British entrepreneur and ethical beauty pioneer. The founder of the Body Shop cosmetics chain, Roddick used the profits of her ethical beauty business to campaign for a better world. She also championed social issues-environmental awareness, animal rights, and self-sufficiency for less-developed countries.
Born to a family of Italian-Jewish immigrants in Littlehampton, West Sussex, England, Roddick attended Newton Park College of Education in Bath, Avon. She taught secondary school, traveled the world, and ran small businesses with her husband. During her travels, Roddick became interested in developing beauty products that use only natural ingredients.
To earn an income for herself and her two daughters while her husband was away in South America, Roddick opened the first Body Shop in Brighton in 1976. By the late 1970s, Roddick was franchising across Europe and personally promoting her product line and her crusading social philosophy. The company went public in 1984.
In 1990, Roddick founded Children on the Edge, a charitable organization that helps disadvantaged children in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. She started to divide her time between the company and the charitable Body Shop Foundation. She stepped down from day-to-day management in 2002. Body Shop was sold to the French cosmetics company L’Oreal in 2006 and to to the Brazilian cosmetics maker Natura Cosméticos in 2017.
Roddick’s autobiography is Body and Soul (1991.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Anita Roddick
If you think you’re too small to make an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.
—Anita Roddick
Topics: Act, Try, Think
If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just.
—Anita Roddick
Topics: Excellence
Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that’s exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking.
—Anita Roddick
Topics: Entrepreneurs
Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking.
—Anita Roddick
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