Business Archives - Infinite Women

Véra Nabokova

Vera Nabokova gave up her own career to become her husband’s editor, reviewer, typist, business manager, and agent, as well as supporting their family financially as a secretary and translator.

Marjorie Merriweather Post

Marjorie Merriweather Post inherited the General Food Corporation in 1914 and served as a director until 1958.

Born enslaved, as an adult free woman Hester Lane built her own business and used her success to buy other people out of slavery, as well as working tirelessly as a fundraiser for different organisations.

Ann Macaulay

1700s English-Canadian businesswoman

Beulah Lee Sampson Flowers

Beulah Lee Sampson Flowers was an African-American educator, community leader, political activist, and businesswoman who was also a mentor to Maya Angelou.

Martha Coston

Martha Coston worked for 10 years to perfect and then patent her late husband’s idea for a pyrotechnic flare.

Florence Griffith Joyner

Florence Griffith Joyner, better known as Flo Jo, was one of the fastest women in the world in the 1980s, and she had the medals and records to prove it.

Amy Ashwood Garvey

Jamaican activist, co-founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which was the most influential anti-colonial organisation in Jamaica for decades. Co-founder of the international Negro World newspaper, and one of the first directors of UNIA’s shipping line, the Black Star Line.

Bertha Benz

Bertha Benz was her husband’s main investor, as well as an inventor. Her 1888 road trip—the first time an automobile with an internal combustion engine was driven over a long distance—was a strategic marketing tactic and practical test.

Ada Harris

The first patent for a hair straightener was filed on November 3, 1893 by Ada Harris