[2] She was educated in local schools, and attended Scotia Seminary in Concord, North Carolina (later Barber-Scotia College) from where she graduated in 1893.

[4][5] A contemporary newspaper account states "With every prospect of success Miss Julia P. Hughes has opened an elegantly appointed establishment... and is already doing a profitable business.

By the time of her divorce, Dr. Julia P. H. Coleman [10] had given up her drug store and with T. Thomas Fortune in March 1914 founded a weekly newspaper, the Washington Sun.

Being an experienced chemist, she experimented with various concoctions designed to grow and straighten kinky hair and eradicate dandruff; she also developed shampoos, soaps, powders and lotions.

In 1909, Dr. Coleman and her then-husband had formed the Columbia Chemical Company, whose purpose was to produce and market a hair preparation she called "Hair-Vim" specifically for African American women.

She was soon able to sell her newspaper venture [16] and devote herself full-time to the production and sale of her hair lotions, soaps, face creams, "corn salves", and shampoos.

[17] Although running well behind such leaders in the field as Madame C. J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone, Dr. Coleman was able, by shrewd marketing, to keep Hair-Vim in business for almost thirty years.

[19] In 1919, according to the NAACP magazine The Crisis, Julia Coleman decided to "establish a branch (of the Hair Care-Vim Chemical Company) in New York City.

[28] After Reverend Robinson's death, Julia Coleman-Robinson gradually withdrew from both the business and social worlds, and she died in September 1950.