She was 11 years old when a chemical relaxer broke off almost all of her hair. Jasmine Lawrence has described the scalp burns herself — the kind of appointment that sends a girl home in tears, staring at what used to be on her head. Most stories like that end with a hat and a hard lesson. Hers ended with a company.
After the relaxer disaster, Lawrence started researching natural ingredients — the way generations of our grandmothers had done before the chemical era — and developed her own hair oil. Then, after a 2004 business-plan camp run by NFTE, the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, she did the thing that separates a kitchen experiment from a founder: she wrote the plan and built the brand. At 13, with a $2,000 loan from her parents, Jasmine Lawrence founded EDEN BodyWorks.
Read that loan correctly. It wasn’t a trust fund. It was two parents deciding their 13-year-old’s plan was worth real money — and a teenager treating it like money she intended to pay back with a business, because that’s exactly what it became.
From her kitchen to the nation’s shelves
The brand passed $1 million in sales. In 2006, while still a teenager, Lawrence appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show — the biggest couch in America, interviewing a schoolgirl about the natural hair company she built because a relaxer burned her. EDEN BodyWorks grew into national retail: Walmart, Sally Beauty, Walgreens and Kroger. The little jars of oil she developed after losing her hair ended up on shelves in the very stores where girls like her bought the products that had failed them.
She later also worked in tech, at Microsoft, while running the brand — because the girl who taught herself ingredient chemistry at 11 was never going to be only one thing.
This page tells hair stories, and it knows this one in its bones. A relaxer is a promise and a risk in the same box, and for a lot of us the risk won at least once. Lawrence’s answer wasn’t bitterness — it was formulation. She went and learned what the chemicals did, found what nature did better, and put it in a bottle with her name on the company behind it.
There is a detail in her founding story that parents on this page should not skate past: the $2,000 was a loan. Not a gift, not a grant — a loan, from her parents, to their 13-year-old, after a business-plan camp had taught her how to write down what the money was for. That structure is its own education. It said: we believe in this enough to risk real money on it, and we respect you enough to expect it back from a real business. EDEN BodyWorks went on to pass $1 million in sales and reach Walmart, Sally Beauty, Walgreens and Kroger — but the empire’s first investor meeting happened at a kitchen table, and its terms were love with a repayment schedule.
Join the conversation
Did a relaxer ever take YOUR hair — and be honest, at what age did it happen? And if your 13-year-old came to you with a business plan and asked for a loan, would you fund her the way Jasmine Lawrence’s parents did? Tell us below.
Source note: Jasmine Lawrence’s account — at 11, a salon chemical relaxer breaking off almost all of her hair, with scalp burns as she has described them; her research into natural ingredients and development of her own hair oil; the 2004 NFTE business-plan camp; her founding of EDEN BodyWorks at 13 with a $2,000 loan from her parents (profiles split on a 2004 vs 2005 founding year, so this article prints the age, not the year); the brand passing $1 million in sales; her appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006 while still a teenager; the brand’s growth into Walmart, Sally Beauty, Walgreens and Kroger; and her later work in tech at Microsoft while running the brand — is from Happi Magazine, EBONY, MadameNoire and New Hope Network profiles. This Jasmine Lawrence is the EDEN BodyWorks founder, not the actress of the same name.
