Following the business example of her father, industrious former sharecropper Chaptle Morgan, Rose Morgan began making artificial flowers and convincing neighborhood children to sell them door-to-door at 10. Her skills with hair flowered into a business by age 14.
After attending Morris School of Beauty, Morgan rented a booth in a neighborhood salon and began working full-time. In 1938, she styled the hair of singer/actress Ethel Waters and impressed her so much that Morgan was invited to New York City as Waters’ guest. Awed by the city’s glamor, Morgan moved there and within six months had established enough customers to open her own beauty shop. Soon, she hired five stylists and signed a ten-year lease on a vacant, dilapidated mansion.
By 1946, the Rose Meta House of Beauty had a staff of 29, including 20 hairstylists, three licensed masseurs, and a registered nurse. In 1945, Rose Meta Morgan opened her first salon, the Rose Meta House of Beauty. The salon offered hair and skin care, as well as other services catering to black women. Just a year later, Ebony deemed her salon “the biggest Negro beauty parlor in the world.” The salon went on to amass more than $3 million in sales only a few years after opening. Morgan eventually expanded her interests to include banking and in 1964, Morgan helped start Freedom National Bank, a black-owned commercial bank operating in New York.