[3] Bertha Alexander was born on New York City's Lower East Side to Hannah Pepper, an Austrian native who had emigrated to the United States via Russia.

[4] Bertha enrolled in a six-month commercial course and then began working as a bookkeeper for the Irving Hat Stores.

[4] I didn't want to make just ordinary dolls with unmeaning, empty smiles on their painted lips and a squeaky way of saying 'mama' after you pinched.

[4] Alexander suggested creating a Red Cross Nurse cloth doll with hand-painted, three-dimensional facial features.

[15] In 1923, with a $1,600 loan, she established the Alexander Doll Company in a one-room studio, employing her sisters and neighbors, a total of 16 people.

[3][19] She researched historical and cultural dress to fashion accurately-detailed dolls clothing, and insisted on quality workmanship.

[20] Alexander was noted for creating doll collections based on notable people and characters in books, films, music, and art.

In the 1930s, for example, she reissued her Alice in Wonderland cloth doll and those of the four March sisters from Little Women to coincide with the film releases of these classics.

[4][21] In 1935 she procured a license from the Canadian government to craft dolls based on the Dionne quintuplets, which were big sellers and helped the business expand.

She also obtained the trademarks to produce dolls replicating such famous figures as Margaret O'Brien, Jacqueline Kennedy, Coco Chanel, and Marlo Thomas.

[2][3][4][19] In 1955 she unveiled the first fashion doll, Cissy, with a large bosom and high-heeled shoes, four years before Barbie was released.

[3] Madame Alexander dolls are also on permanent exhibition at the Congressional Club in Washington, D.C., and the Children's Trust Museum in New Delhi.

[2][19] She was vice president and trustee of the Women's League for Israel, which dedicated a rose garden in her honor at one of its residences in Jerusalem.