Sara Spencer Washington

Sara Spencer Washington was born in Beckley, West Virginia on June 6, 1889, to Joshua and Ellen Douglass Phillips.

That year, she opened her own small hairdresser shop in Atlantic City, New Jersey, despite the fact that her parents wanted her to become a school teacher.

[4][2] In 1919, Washington founded the Apex News and Hair Company in Atlantic City, New Jersey and began her career as a cosmetics entrepreneur.

While Washington's company started as a one-room beauty shop, it is estimated to have been worth nearly half-a-million dollars by the mid-1940s.

[7] There is a historical marker in Atlantic City in the neighborhood where Madame Washington lived and operated Apex.