Watch Dame Anita Roddick speaking earlier this month about setting up her business

Dame Anita Roddick and the Body Shop: slide show

Dame Anita Roddick, the Body Shop founder who combined success in business with a passion for environmentalism, died last night after suffering a brain haemorrhage.

One of the most successful female entrepreneurs in history, Dame Anita died at 6.30pm at St Richard’s Hospital in Chichester, according to a statement from her family. She was 64 years old.

She had been admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit on Sunday evening following her collapse after complaining of a sudden headache. Her husband, Gordon, and daughters Sam and Justine were all with her when she died.

Last night tributes, led by Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, poured in for the businesswoman who built The Body Shop from scratch in the 1970s, selling moisturisers based on Bedouin recipes. When the company was bought by L’Oreal last year, the Roddicks netted roughly £130 million.

Mr Brown called Dame Anita one of this country’s “true pioneers” and said he was “deeply saddened” to hear of her death. He said: “She campaigned for green issues for many years before it became fashionable and inspired millions to the cause by bringing sustainable products to a mass market.”

As one of this country’s most successful businesswomen she was an inspiration to women throughout the country striving to set up and grow their own companies.

Those paying tribute last night described her as a pioneer, as an inspiration, as an activist, as a champion of the oppressed and as a joy to be with.

Many painted a picture of a compassionate campaigner who had been the direct inspiration for many of the socially-conscious organisations now embedded within society. Without Dame Anita there would have been no Big Issue, its founder said last night.

John Bird told BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight: “Anita was the mother of the Big Issue. There is absolutely no way the Big Issue would have happened if Anita and her husband Gordon hadn’t started a business that created a social engine that drove people like us to get creative.”

The executive director of a charity she founded said she inspired entrepreneurs with a conscience to “get their hands dirty”. Brendan Cox, of Crisis Action, added: “Anita challenged social entrepreneurs to raise their game. ‘Enough of bring-and-buy sales, let’s change the global economy.’ She showed that tinkering at the edges wasn’t where we should stop, we should get involved, get our hands dirty and change the world trying.”

Dame Anita, who once said she did not want to die rich, also immersed herself in international issues such as Third World debt and human rights. With this commercialism led by conscience, she brought “eco-friendly” products to the British public.

Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen last night described her as a “true champion of the oppressed and persecuted” who had “shared her brilliance and energy with us to marvellous effect”. She added: “Fundamentally she was an activist, someone who always understood the importance of people standing up for human rights.”

Tony Juniper, the Friends of the Earth director, said she was “a leading light of the modern green movement, and one of the first people to combine a profitable business with environmental responsibility”.

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said she was a “pioneer”, adding: “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. When you look at it today, and how every company claims to be green, she was living this decades ago.”

Dame Anita revealed in February of this year that she was carrying the Hepatitis C virus. She worked hard in recent months raising awareness of the condition and calling for it to be taken more seriously as a “public health challenge”. Charles Gore, the chief executive of the Hepatitis C Trust, said last night: “She was always willing to do anything to help. It was extraordinary how it wouldn’t matter what it was, she would do it.

“Working with her was so joyful. The great thing about Anita was that she took all her causes incredibly seriously but never took herself seriously, which made her really fun to be with.”

In her own words

“I was a natural outsider, and I was drawn to other outsiders and rebels”
— on her childhood as the daughter of an Italian immigrant couple in an English seaside town

“Nobody talks of entrepreneurship as survival, but that's exactly what it is and what nurtures creative thinking”
— on founding The Body Shop

“Campaigning and good business is also about putting forward solutions, not just opposing destructive practices or human rights abuses”
— on activism and business ethics

“I don't want to die rich. Money does not mean anything to me”
— on philanthropy

“Having hep C means I live with a sharp sense of my own mortality, which in many ways makes life more vivid and immediate. It makes me even more determined to just get on with things”
— on the disease that she carried for more than three decades

“The most exciting part of my life is now – I believe the older you get, the more radical you become”
— on remaining active in her sixties

Source: Times database

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