Roddick, Dame Anita

▪ 2008

Anita Lucia Perella  British entrepreneur

born Oct. 23, 1942, Littlehampton, West Sussex, Eng.

died Sept. 10, 2007, Chichester, West Sussex

as the founder of the Body Shop cosmetics chain, championed social issues—such as environmental awareness, animal rights, self-sufficiency for less-developed countries, and other causes that she deemed worthy—as much as she did the natural botanical-based beauty products that she extensively researched and marketed. After attending Newton Park College of Education in Bath, Avon, she taught secondary school, traveled the world, and ran small businesses with her husband. In her travels Roddick admired the skin and hair of local women who used nothing more than indigenous plants. She worked to develop these and other natural ingredients into products for a broader audience and in 1976 opened the first Body Shop in Brighton. By the late '70s she was authorizing franchises across Europe and personally promoting both her product line and her crusading social philosophy. The company went public in 1984. From 1990 Roddick divided her time between the company and the charitable Body Shop Foundation. She stepped down from day-to-day management in 2002, but she was back in the news in 2006 when she sold the Body Shop International PLC for some £652 million ($1.14 billion) to the more conventional (and allegedly less ethically concerned) French cosmetics company L'Oreal. Roddick published her autobiography, Body and Soul, in 1991. She was made OBE in 1988 and DBE in 2003.

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