Business & Economics: Entrepreneurs

Advertising and Consumer Culture in the United States

Beatrice Alexander

Adrien Arpel
Adrien Arpel is a pioneering entrepreneur who has been highly successful in the skincare industry. She realized there was a need in the cosmetics marketplace for a business that would educate the consumer. Arpel was the president and CEO of Adrien Arpel, Inc., an enterprise with approximately 500 salons across the United States and Canada.

Angelica Berrie

Sara Blakely

Ginevra Blanis
Ginevra Blanis was a late sixteenth-century silk manufacturer of the Florentine ghetto and Siena. She left her mark as a founder of the young community with her philanthropy and in the public communication of what she considered Jewish values in the provisions of her will.

Joani Blank

Claire Bodner
Fashion designer, publicist, entrepreneur, and sales representative, Claire Bodner, with virtually no formal training in fashion or business, developed and ran her own fashion business, Ducaire Timely Separates, in New York City from 1941 to 1949. The company was highly successful and was featured in top magazines and stores.
Ruth Light Braun

Fanny Brooks

Bobbi Brown

Frieda Caplan

Hattie Carnegie
Hattie Carnegie was a leader in American fashion for three decades, designing clothes with a blend of simplicity and elegance. Carnegie’s work ranged from designing uniforms for the Women’s Army Corps to one-of-a-kind creations for clients like the Duchess of Windsor, Clare Booth Luce, Tallulah Bankhead, and Joan Crawford.

Safra Catz

Elaine Lustig Cohen
Colonial Entrepreneurs: A Quartet of Jewish Women
Esther Pinheiro, Esther Brown, Rachel Luis, and Simja De Torres were widows, each held property, and each was at one time or another a merchant. Although they have been overlooked by history, written records that document their activities demonstrate the lives of well-off colonial Jewish women.

Chloe Coscarelli

Helen DeRoy

Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp
Impulsive, adventurous, and outspoken, Josephine Sarah Marcus Earp ran away from home when she was seventeen years old. Two years later, she joined destinies with western lawman, gambler, and entrepreneur Wyatt Earp. For forty-seven years, they roamed the West, mingling with well-known westerners on both sides of the law.

Eastern European Immigrants in the United States
Forty-four percent of the approximately two million Jewish immigrants who arrived in the United States between 1886 and 1914 were women. Although these women were more politically active and autonomous than other immigrant women, dire economic circumstances constricted their lives. The hopes these immigrant women harbored for themselves were often transferred to the younger generation.
Racheli Edelman
Shulamith Reich Elster

Entrepreneurs: From Antiquity Through the Early Modern Period
