Anita Roddick

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Lore & Background

Anita Roddick opened her first Body Shop in Brighton, England in 1976, aiming to earn an income for herself and her two daughters while her husband was away in South America. She wanted to provide quality skincare products in refillable containers and sample sizes, all marketed with truth rather than hype. She opened her second shop six months later. On her husband's return, he joined the business. By 1991, the Body Shop had 700 branches, and Roddick was awarded the 1991 World Vision Award for Development Initiative. By 2004, the company had 1,980 stores, serving more than 77 million customers throughout the world. In March 2006, L'Oréal purchased Body Shop for £652 million. Roddick addressed the sale directly in an interview with The Guardian, saying she saw herself as a kind of 'Trojan horse' who by selling her business to a huge firm would be able to influence the decisions it makes. Roddick was involved in activism and campaigning for environmental and social issues, including involvement with Greenpeace and the newspaper The Big Issue. In 1990 she founded Children on the Edge, a charitable organisation which helps disadvantaged children in Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia. In the late 1990s, she became involved in the case of the Angola Three, African-American men who had been held for more than two decades in solitary confinement at Louisiana State Penitentiary, helping raise international awareness and funds for appeals. Despite her high-profile statements regarding The Body Shop's charitable mission, it did not make charitable donations for its first 11 years of operation; the first sponsorship, made possible by the money generated by the 1984 IPO, was for Greenpeace posters in 1985. Roddick was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis due to long-standing hepatitis C in 2004, but did not reveal her illness until February 2007. She said, 'I have hepatitis C. It's a bit of a bummer, but you groan and move on.' She subsequently promoted the work of The Hepatitis C Trust and campaigned to increase awareness of the disease. She died of a stroke on 10 September 2007, after being admitted to St Richard's Hospital, Chichester, the previous evening suffering from a severe headache. As promised earlier, she left her estate to charities rather than to her family and friends; it was disclosed that she had donated all of her £51 million assets upon her death.

Reader's Guide

Anita Roddick's significance lies in her role as a pioneer of ethical consumerism. Through The Body Shop, she demonstrated that a business could prioritize environmental and social values—such as prohibiting the use of products being tested on animals in some of its products and promoting fair trade with developing countries—while achieving commercial success. She believed that business should offer a form of moral leadership, being a more powerful force in society than religion or government. However, her legacy is not without complexity: a May 2002 article in The Globe and Mail reported that Roddick had copied the name, concept and original brochures from the original Body Shop started in Berkeley, California in 1970, and her original brochures were near-verbatim copies of material produced by that shop. When expanding into the United States, she bought the rights to the Body Shop name for $3.5 million from the original shop owners, who were required to sign a confidentiality agreement. Additionally, the company did not make charitable donations for its first 11 years. The sale to L'Oréal, a firm known to use animal testing and part-owned by Nestlé, also drew criticism. Nonetheless, her activism—from founding Children on the Edge to supporting the Angola Three—and her posthumous donation of her entire £51 million fortune underscore her commitment to social causes.

Did You Know?

• Anita Roddick was born in a bomb shelter in Littlehampton, Sussex.
• Her biological father was Henry Perilli, an ice-cream and soda bar proprietor, and a cousin of her mother's husband Donato Perella.
• The Body Shop's first sponsorship, funded by the 1984 IPO, was for Greenpeace posters in 1985.
• Roddick described selling The Body Shop to L'Oréal as being a 'Trojan horse' to influence the larger firm's decisions.
• She donated all of her £51 million assets to charities upon her death.