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Body Shop founder Roddi.ck dead at 64

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September 11, 2007

ANITA Roddi.ck, the founder of the Body Shop cosmetics store, has died after suffering a major brain haemorrhage. She was 64.

The businesswoman, dubbed the Queen of Green, died today at a hospital in southern England, with her husband and daughters by her side, the family said in a statement.

"Gordon, Justine and Sam Roddi.ck are very sad to announce that after suffering a major brain haemorrhage, Anita Roddi.ck died at 6.30pm this evening at the age of 64," the statement said.

"Anita Roddi.ck was admitted to St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, close to her home, yesterday evening when she collapsed after complaining of a sudden headache."

Roddi.ck was called the Queen of Green for her trailblazing environmentally-friendly, humane business practices that made her a leader in her native England and around the world.

Greenpeace executive director John Sauven called Roddi.ck an "incredible woman" who would be "sorely missed."

"She was so ahead of her time when it came to issues of how business could be done in different ways, not just profit motivated but taking into account environmental issues," Sauven said.

"When you look at it today, and how every company claims to be green, she was living this decades ago."

Roddi.ck opened her first Body Shop store in 1976 in Brighton, southern England, before fair trade and eco-friendly businesses were fashionable.

The Body Shop has grown into a global phenomenon with nearly 2,000 stores in 50 countries. It became part of the French company L'Oreal Group last year, but remains independently run.

Roddi.ck and her husband stepped down as co-chairmen of the company in 2002, but she continued to contribute as a consultant.

The company made its name as much for its values as for how its wares are made.

She said her environmental business ethics were inspired in part by women's beauty rituals that she discovered while travelling in developing countries and lessons from closer to home that her mother passed on from life during World War II.

"Why waste a container when you can refill it? And why buy more of something than you can use? We behaved as she did in the Second World War, we reused everything, we refilled everything and we recycled all we could," Roddi.ck wrote.

The Body Shop opposed product testing on animals and tried to encourage the development of local communities in the Third World countries where it sources many of its goods. It also invested in a wind farm in Wales, as part of its campaign in support of renewable energy, and has set up its own human rights award.

Roddi.ck said in February that she had contracted Hepatitis C through a blood transfusion while giving birth to Sam in 1971. She made the announcement after she was named head of Britain's Hepatitis C Trust charity.

In recognition of her contribution to business and charity, Queen Elizabeth II made Roddi.ck a dame, the female equivalent of knighthood, in 2003.

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