Bettiann Gardner dead: Matriarch of family-owned hair care company, first female co-owner of the Chicago Bulls, dies at 93

Bettiann Gardner, who was a co-founder of Soft Sheen Products Inc., one of the largest African American-owned hair care manufacturing companies in the United States, and the first female co-owner of the Chicago Bulls, died Dec. 19. She was 93.

Mrs. Gardner died from complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

She and her husband, Edward G. Gardner, who passed away in March, founded the company, which they ran out of the basement of their home near 95th and State streets, in 1964 to create better hair care products for African Americans.

At its peak, the company employed nearly 900 people — mostly at its 8-acre campus at 87th Street and Dobson Avenue. 

The company began while Mrs. Gardner’s husband was working as an assistant principal with Chicago Public Schools. For extra cash, he sold hair products for a beauty supply company to local salons.

He figured he would try his hand at mixing a few batches of hair care products at home and began selling those instead. He quit his job in education when his side gig became more lucrative.

In the early years of the company, Mrs. Gardner did the books and the couple’s four children helped bottle and screw tops on jars, among other duties. Each worked at the company throughout high school, college and beyond.

“For my mom, it was always how we did things, and she very much appreciated the aesthetics of life, and that showed in the buildings, the ingredients, the products, the packaging. It was all part of her desire to be the best we could be,” said her daughter Terri Gardner. “In many ways, the culture of the company was largely a reflection of her values and principles of excellence. She expected a lot and that helped everybody to raise their game.”

The policies and procedures Mrs. Gardner put in place positioned the company for exponential growth with its release of Care Free Curl in 1978, an invention of Mrs. Gardener’s son Gary Gardner.

The Gardners sold the brand, now known as Soft Sheen Carson, to cosmetics giant L’Oreal in 1998.

Mrs. Gardner and her husband bought a share of the Chicago Bulls right around the time Michael Jordan joined the team in the mid-1980s.

“Both my parents were invited to be investors in the Bulls the year before or the same year that Jordan came,” Terri said. “No other Black woman had been a shareholder in an NBA team.”

The couple went to every Bulls home game and received rings with their names on them when the team won world championships. 

“My dad was on the board of the Chicago Bulls for a time and Michael Jordan called my mom ‘Mrs. G.,’” Terri said, noting that they sold their stake in the team after the couple sold their business in 1998.

Mrs. Gardner was also a great supporter of the arts and, in 1987, she and her husband bought the shuttered Avalon Theater, refurbished it and christened it the New Regal, after the original Regal in Bronzeville, a mecca that rivaled Harlem’s Apollo Theater in its heyday.

Mrs. Gardner ran the day-to-day operations. Major acts like Gladys Knight, Bernie Mac and Tyler Perry graced the South Side theater’s stage. More importantly — to Mrs. Gardner, at least — the New Regal Theater produced children’s shows that played to busloads of CPS students through the 1990s.

She was also a founding member of Chicago Sinfonietta, an orchestra that features minority and women musicians.

Mrs. Gardner was also known for her hats.

“Her outfit wasn’t complete unless she had a hat to go with it,” Terri said. “She had a lot of authentic clothing from West Africa. She had her own style, but it was very much a graceful and grand style, and it was the way she carried herself. When you met, she made an impression.”

Mrs. Gardner was born in Chicago on June 26, 1930, to Yula Gueno, a school nurse, and Joseph Gueno, a house painter. The couple had moved north from New Orleans to set up a new life.

Mrs. Gardner was a graduate of DuSable High School and a product of Chicago’s Wilson Junior College (now Kennedy-King College) and Roosevelt University.

Prior to devoting her career to Soft Sheen, Mrs. Gardner worked briefly at Spiegel, a major catalog company in Chicago. She also worked for several years at the Chicago Public Library.

She took pride in bringing jobs to the Black community on the South Side and on an individual level helped many people pay for college or buy their first home, Terri said.

Her husband was also a philanthropist and donated tens of thousands of dollars to causes that sought to end gun violence. To that end, he helped create the nonprofit organization Black on Black Love.

In addition to Terri Gardner and Gary Gardner, Mrs. Gardner is also survived by her sons Guy Gardner and Tracy Gardner, as well as seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Services will be private.