George E Johnson, the Chicago entrepreneur behind brands including Afro Sheen, Ultra Wave and Classy Curl, and often credited with transforming Black hair care in the United States (US), died on Monday at age 99, according to a family statement.

US media are reporting that Johnson, the founder of Johnson Products Company, passed away due to a respiratory illness.

A report from NBC News noted that in 1954, when many companies ignored Black consumers, the Johnson Products Company was founded to cater to African Americans’ hair, fashion and cosmetics.

“He truly believed business could be a force for good, creating opportunity, strengthening communities, opening doors for others, and demonstrating that success carries with it a responsibility to serve,” the report quoted his family as saying.

The business was founded with his first wife, Joan Johnson and saw incredible success, becoming the first Black-owned company listed on the American Stock Exchange (NYSE American) in 1971.

It is also credited with helping the celebrated African American show Soul Train grow from a Chicago-based hit to a nationally acclaimed programme through sponsorship.

Johnson, who was born in a sharecropper’s shack in 1927, moved to Chicago at only two years old and did not finish high school, instead working as a door-to-door cosmetics salesperson.

In his memoir, Afro-Sheen, released in 2025, he revealed the business had been funded with a US$250 bank loan, which he got by entreating the white loan officer to lend him the money for a family trip.

“I knew this request (for a vacation loan) wouldn’t rattle [the loan officer’s] belief that he was superior to me. Nor would it challenge his stereotypes of Black men as subservient or unintelligent,” Johnson recounted in the book.

Johnson Products Company is now owned by a majority African American investment firm.