Businesswoman. She is credited with being one of the first African American millionaires and the first woman, reaching this goal in the early 20th century. At six-foot tall, she was a beauty who was always well-dressed and referred to as “the Mahogany Millionairess.” Born Lelia McWilliams, she was the only surviving child of Sarah Breedlove Walker, who became a wealthy entrepreneur, starting in the hair-styling product industry in Harlem, New York as “Madam C. J Walker.” After her father died when she was a toddler, her mother married for a second time to John Davis, who was an alcoholic, and then a third time to Charles Walker relocating from the Deep South to Denver, Colorado. She spent her childhood in St. Louis, Missouri and attended for a short time Knoxville College in Tennessee. As an adult, she changed her name to A'Lelia and took her step-father's surname of Walker. After college, she managed the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania branch of her mother's hair-styling product empire; Lelia College, a school of cosmetology; in 1914 Walker College of Hair Culture in New York City; and by 1919 upon her mother's death succeeded to president of Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, the largest black-owned business in the United States at that time. In the family's 34-room estate, Villa Lewaro, which was built in 1916, and her New York City townhouse, the Dark Tower, she hosted extravagant parties with guests of the Harlem Renaissance writers, artists, and musicians from Harlem and Greenwich Village. She and many of her colleagues were very liberal in their thinking, which was the subject of criticism from the conservative Harlem community. As a lasting tribute to her mother, in 1927 she built in Indianapolis, Indiana the Walker Building, which covered a whole city block and served as a social and cultural complex of the African-American community. During segregated times, this complex provided the community with a movie theater, art center, and a ballroom, and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1991. Today, after having a fifteen-million-dollar renovation, there are restaurants and a casino in the building. The interior of the building had an African theme with “Art Deco-izing” of Egyptian and Moorish plaster works. Sailing on the SS Paris on November of 1921 and returning on April of 1922, she traveled abroad visiting Pairs, Nice, Monte Carlo, Naples, Rome, Cairo, Jerusalem, Djibouti Addis Ababa, and London. While in Africa, A'Lelia became one of the only westerners to visit in March of 1922 the Ethiopian Empress Waizeru Zawditu. On the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, her companies began to feel the impact of the economic depression early with the dismissal of some of the 3,000 African-American employees, who were mostly women. She closed the townhouse in 1930; the next year many of her antiques, art pieces and some treasures at the villa were placed on the auction block; and she divorced her third husband, Dr. James Kennedy, months before her death. For years, she overate rich foods and over drank alcoholic beverages, which took a toll on her body with many health problems including uncontrolled hypertension. She died in a beach cottage of a cerebral bleed in the wee hours of the morning after hosting a birthday gala in New Jersey. Her guests had celebrated the birthday eating lobster and drinking champagne while the rest of the nation was under the trials of the Great Depression and Prohibition. She left an adopted daughter and granddaughter, who was named A'Lelia in her honor, to manage the business. The granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles, is the author of “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker”, a biography of her great-great-grandmother, and most recently published book about her grandmother, “Joy Goddess of Harlem: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance.”