UK’s richest hairdresser was married to Lulu and did Princess Diana’s hair | UK | News | EUROtoday

He is claimed to have a wealth of £150m, his purchasers included Princess Diana and Joanna Lumley and he was married to music celebrity Lulu for 14 years.

His Frizz Ease haircare vary was not far off being a family title when he offered it to a Japanese firm for £260m in 2002, round 30 years after he had began his very first salon in his mid-twenties.

Meet John Frieda, who has been ranked fourth in an inventory of the UK’s wealthiest magnificence trade leaders in 2025. He comes behind make-up market chief Charlotte Tilbury; the founders of the Lush model, Mark and Mo Constantine; and Sanjay Vadera, founding father of The Fragrance Shop.

John Frieda was born in London in 1951. His father, Isidore, was already a hairdressing salon proprietor and John labored part-time at his father’s salon whereas attending the personal King’s School in Harrow.

His father is reported to have helped John with some early investements, earlier than John went on to construct his personal astonishing checklist of purchasers in addition to invent his personal hairstyles and merchandise. His Frizz Ease vary is claimed to promote two models each minute within the USA alone.

Part of John’s success was right down to his understanding that not all hair needs to be handled equally. Heather Warnke, director of selling for John Frieda, advised Allure: “No one even went so far as to categorise hair types by colour. Blondes have very specific needs that weren’t being addressed in the category and John Frieda wanted to address that. After that was done, other research was completed to determine how products could be formulated to enhance specific hair colors.”

He offered Frizz Ease in 2002 to Kao Corporation for £260m, with the worth so excessive because of heavy gross sales of Frizz Ease and the Sheer Blonde assortment.

But if John Frieda’s product vary is spectacular, his consumer checklist is off the charts. He styled Princess Diana, Paul McCartney, Joanna Lumley, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Raquel Welch, Diana Ross and Farah Fawcett. And from 1977 till 1991, Frieda was married to Scottish pop singer and actress Lulu. He later married Avery Agnelli, widow of the Fiat inheritor Giovanni Alberto Agnelli.

Frieda’s phenomenal success is right down to his deep understanding not solely of hair and the haircare trade but in addition the kinds of relationships individuals have with their hair.

“Hair is really funny stuff,” he as soon as advised a reporter. “Most people don’t like their hair.”

Frizz Ease, which launched within the early Nineties and have become a worldwide phenomenon, “changed women’s lives”, Linda Wells, then editor-in-chief of Allure, has stated. She added: “It really changed the way women approached their hair. A lot of women have frizzy hair, and I knew women who wouldn’t swim, who panicked when it rained. This gave them a solution.”

Frieda launched it when he realised, he stated, that “there was nothing for frizzy hair, no one even said ‘frizz’ — we created the category”.

A game-changing second got here when he went on a British TV present to reveal his product, making use of it to a mannequin’s roots after which blow-drying, which reportedly led to viewers flooding the cellphone traces once they noticed the outcomes.

“The presenter had to ask people to please stop calling,” Frieda advised Allure. “Boots asked for 1.2 million bottles. And I was running the company from my basement.”