In 1906, her mother married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman, and became an independent hairdresser and cosmetic cream retailer.

A'Lelia grew up in St. Louis and attended Knoxville College in Tennessee before entering the family business, having taken the Walker name.

The first floor housed the Walker Hair Parlor, and the second the Lelia College of Beauty Culture, where new cosmeticians were trained to work in the company's shops.

She initiated several marketing campaigns to promote the company—including a competition among prominent ministers for a Trip to the Holy Land in 1924—and remained the face of the Walker Company.

[6] A new million-dollar headquarters and manufacturing facility, opened in late 1927 in Indianapolis, placed additional expenses and financial pressure on the operation, and she sold a great deal of valuable art and antiques.

She grew up in the neighborhood where Scott Joplin and other ragtime musicians gathered at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe on St. Louis's Market Street.

She also entertained at her pied-à-terre at 80 Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem and Villa Lewaro, her country house in Irvington, New York in Westchester County – a 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m2) Italianate mansion which she had built for her mother in 1916 to 1918, again designed by Tandy.

[11] In the 1920s, Walker spent four months traveling throughout Europe and elsewhere, visiting Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Naples, Rome, Cairo, Jerusalem, Djibouti, Addis Ababa, and London.

In Paris she spent time with dancer Josephine Baker, couturier Paul Poiret, actress Mistinguett, and actor Dooley Wilson.

In November 1923, A'Lelia Walker orchestrated an elaborate "Million Dollar Wedding" (closer to $40,000) for Mae's marriage to Dr. Gordon Jackson.

She was surrounded by friends who had traveled to Long Branch, New Jersey to celebrate a birthday party with lobster and champagne amid the Great Depression and Prohibition.

[13] As her casket was lowered into the ground next to her mother's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery[14] in the Bronx, Hubert Julian —the celebrated "Black Eagle"— flew over in a small plane and dropped dahlias and gladioli onto the site.