Estelle Brown Hamilton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
November 28, 1883
Estelle Brown Hamilton | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Estelle Brown November 28, 1883 Savannah, Georgia |
| Died | August 19, 1933 (aged 49) New York |
| Other names | Mme. Estelle, Estelle Hamilton Daniels |
| Occupations | Entrepreneur, educator |
Estelle Brown Hamilton (November 28, 1883 – August 19, 1933), known as Mme. Estelle, was an American entrepreneur and educator, president of the Nu-Life Beauty College in Harlem in the 1920s.
Estelle Brown was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1883, the daughter of Abraham Brown and Marion Marshall Brown. She married in 1902, to William Henry Hamilton; he died in 1909, and she moved to New York to train as a beautician.[1][2]
Career
As "Mme. Estelle", Hamilton was president of the Nu-Life Beauty College in Harlem,[3][4] training hair stylists in the science and culture of black skin, scalp, and hair.[5] By 1924, she had "hundreds of agents... all over the country", graduates of her program who sold her goods and used her methods.[2] She was the first president of the National Beauty Culturists' League, and in 1928 addressed over 500 league members at the annual convention in Chicago, on the importance of complying with a new wave of state regulations of the beauty industry.[6] Her business suffered with the onset of the Great Depression, and with the coincidence of two injuries to Hamilton herself: she was burned in her laboratory, and she was "struck by a taxi".[7]
Hamilton was also a noted social hostess in Harlem in the 1920s.[8][9] In 1925 she hosted a benefit concert at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, for an "old folks' home" in Harlem.[10] She retired to Jamaica, Long Island, in 1931.[11]
