Victorian Beauty Industry: Key Concepts and Martha Matilda Harper

Queen Victoria of England reigned from $1837-1901$ , a period known as the Victorian Age. Grooming fashions were drastically influenced by the social mores of this era and its restrictive norms, aimed at preserving skin health and beauty.
Victorian women used beauty marks made from natural ingredients such as honey, eggs, oatmeal, and other substances instead of cosmetics.
They pinched their cheeks and bit their lips to induce natural color.

1845: Metal hot comb was invented in France to temporarily straighten curly hair. $1845$
1872: Marcel invented the first curling iron with tongs heated by a gas burner. $1872$
1877: The first professional beauty magazine, the American Hairdresser, was published. $1877$
1880: Franz founded a German beauty company, later called Willow Professionals. $1880$
The long-lived professional beauty product company started in this era is still in operation today.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, beauty emerged as one of the few occupations that allowed women to become entrepreneurs.

Martha Matilda Harper is a prominent early example of an entrepreneurial woman in beautification. She was born in $1857$ .
Harper learned about hair health from one of her employees, a physician, and later developed a hair tonic in $1888$ .
She opened the Harper Hair Parlor, the first hair salon in the Rochester, New York area, and began training impoverished women in the art of business and healthy hair.
In $1891$ , Harper became the first person in America to introduce modern franchising: former servants or women of little means could operate salons under the Harper Hair Parlor name.
Harper created business systems for her franchises and eventually provided them with the full line of her products for services and retail.
At her peak, Harper had more than $500$ princeses (note: transcript uses the term "princesses"—likely intended to mean franchisees) in the United States and throughout the world by $02/2003$ .
She was posthumously inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

The era illustrates how beauty and grooming intersected with entrepreneurship and women’s economic empowerment.
The transition from cosmetic products to service-based beauty (salons and franchising) created a pathway for women to own and scale businesses.
Professional media (e.g., the American Hairdresser) played a key role in shaping industry standards and opportunities.
Ethical, philosophical, and practical implications include evolving beauty standards, labor arrangements for franchise workers, and the dissemination of beauty products across society.