George E. Johnson, a pioneer of textured hair brands including Ultra Sheen, Afro Sheen and Classic Curl, has died at age 99.

His death was confirmed to The New York Times by his second wife, Madeline Murphy Rabb. She said the cause was respiratory illness.

Born in a sharecropper’s shack in Mississippi and raised in Chicago, the entrepreneur founded Johnson Products Company in 1954 alongside his first wife Joan, transforming the Black hair market in the U.S.

After trialing with barbers, he soon settled on the path of beauty shops and later expanded into mass market retail — variety, drug and discount stores.

In a 1973 interview, he told WWD he believed the reason many Black cosmetics companies had been unsuccessful was that they went franchise routes in department stores.

“We don’t limit the availability of our products. We put them where the people are. Most Black people in the inner city shop in variety, drug and discount stores. Food chains are just now waking up to cosmetics,” he said.

That strategy paid off big. According to WWD archives, through selling in mass market outlets, Ultra Sheen and Afro Sheen hair dressings, relaxers and conditioners accounted for the bulk of Johnson’s $24.2 million in sales by fiscal 1973. Cosmetics were launched in 1970 with Ultra Sheen Facial Fashions, with those sales totaling just under $2 million in 1973.

Johnson’s company sponsored the television show “Soul Train,” on which it advertised its products. He told WWD that it cost $1.6 million in 1973 and was its strongest advertising medium.

In addition to his hair business, Johnson was chairman of the Independence Bank of Chicago, one of the first Black-owned banks, and owned 26 percent of it. He remained its chairman until its sale in 1995.

According to the same WWD article, he also headed the George E. Johnson Foundation and Educational Fund, to help send minority students in the inner city to college.

In 1971, the company went public on the American Stock Exchange, the first Black-owned company to do so, and was acquired by Ivax Corp in 1993, changing hands again just over a decade later when it was bought by Procter & Gamble.

In March 2009, P&G sold its Johnson Products Co. unit to RCJP Acquisition Inc. for an undisclosed amount. At the time, it had annualized sales of more than $23 million. 

Johnson Products Co. relaunched under Godrej Consumer Products in 2020 with nine new products sold at Walmart, Walgreens, Sally Beauty and Amazon.com.