George E. Johnson, a pioneer of textured hair brands including Ultra Sheen, Afro Sheen and Classic Curl, has died at age 99.
His death was confirmed to The New York Times by his second wife, Madeline Murphy Rabb. She said the cause was respiratory illness.
Born in a sharecropper’s shack in Mississippi and raised in Chicago, the entrepreneur founded Johnson Products Company in 1954 alongside his first wife Joan, transforming the Black hair market in the U.S.
After trialing with barbers, he soon settled on the path of beauty shops and later expanded into mass market retail — variety, drug and discount stores.
In a 1973 interview, he told WWD he believed the reason many Black cosmetics companies had been unsuccessful was because they went franchise routes in department stores.
