London – Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop cosmetics chain, died Monday after suffering a brain hemorrhage, her family said. She was 64.
Roddick had revealed in February that she contracted hepatitis C through a blood transfusion while giving birth to a daughter in 1971. She made the announcement after being named head of the British charity Hepatitis C Trust.
The businesswoman was lauded as the “Queen of Green” for trailblazing business practices that sought to be environmentally friendly and won her renown in her native England and worldwide.
“Businesses have the power to do good,” she wrote on the website of the company, which was bought last year by L’Oreal Group.
Roddick opened her first Body Shop outlet in 1976 in Brighton, England, before fair trade and eco- friendly businesses were in vogue.
She said her business ethics were inspired, in part, by women’s beauty rituals she discovered while traveling in developing countries and lessons her mother passed on from the hard years of World War II.
“Why waste a container when you can refill it? And why buy more of something than you can use? We behaved as she did in the Second World War,” Roddick wrote.
The Body Shop opposed product testing on animals and tried to encourage development by purchasing materials from small communities in the Third World. It also invested in a wind farm in Wales as part of its campaign to support renewable energy and set up its own human-rights award.
The company has grown to nearly 2,000 stores in 50 countries and remains independently run, despite being owned by L’Oreal.
In recognition of Roddick’s contribution to business and charity, Queen Elizabeth II made her a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, in 2003.
“She was so ahead of her time when it came to issues of how business could be done in different ways, not just profit motivated but taking into account environmental issues,” said Greenpeace executive director John Sauven.
