MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT

IN SCHOOL I would have been voted least likely to succeed. I was a bit of a dilettante.

One minute I was singing in a rock band, the next I was enrolling to study French in Paris. Eventually I went to law school for three years, but the beauty business beckoned.

By the Eighties I was working in haircare. Then in 1989 I moved to the UK, teaming up with John Frieda.

We often joke that John had the beauty and I the brains. I’m analytical and I like solving problems. I have always had frizzy hair, so I had an idea for a serum that would fix it and John Frieda’s iconic Frizz Ease was born.

Color Wow Root Cover Up also grew out of my own needs. Most women in their 50s colour their hair, but there was nothing user-friendly on the market for that time between dyes when the grey roots come through again.

My lightbulb moment came on a photoshoot with a hairdresser who worked with wigs. He was trying to make blonde wigs look more natural by creating some dark roots using brown eyeshadow. A brilliant idea — but it didn’t work properly. It looked dusty and blew off.

I thought some sort of powder would be the perfect way to cover roots, but it would have to match the hair seamlessly, look shiny and, crucially, stay put.

It took three years to perfect the formula that not only covered greys, but lightened dark roots as well.

We finally cracked it with a coloured mineral powder that doesn’t budge even if you go swimming.

Colour Wow Root Cover Up has won 30 major beauty awards. Yes, I’m grateful for the accolades, but what really means more to me is that we’ve been able to solve probably the single most frustrating problem for lots of women.

Many of us feel terrible when our hair is a mess and our greys show through, so it’s incredibly rewarding to know we’ve found a solution.