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

His Frizz Ease haircare range was not far off being a household name when he sold it to a Japanese company for £260m in 2002, around 30 years after he had started his very first salon in his mid-twenties.

Meet John Frieda, who has been ranked fourth in a list of the UK's wealthiest beauty industry leaders in 2025. He comes behind make-up market leader Charlotte Tilbury; the founders of the Lush brand, Mark and Mo Constantine; and Sanjay Vadera, founder of The Fragrance Shop.

John Frieda was born in London in 1951. His father, Isidore, was already a hairdressing salon owner and John worked part-time at his father's salon while attending the private King's School in Harrow.

His father is reported to have helped John with some early investements, before John went on to build his own astonishing list of clients as well as invent his own hairstyles and products. His Frizz Ease range is said to sell two units every minute in the USA alone.

Part of John's success was down to his understanding that not all hair should be treated equally. Heather Warnke, director of marketing for John Frieda, told 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 sold Frizz Ease in 2002 to Kao Corporation for £260m, with the value so high thanks to heavy sales of Frizz Ease and the Sheer Blonde collection.

But if John Frieda's product range is impressive, his client list 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 until 1991, Frieda was married to Scottish pop singer and actress Lulu. He later married Avery Agnelli, widow of the Fiat heir Giovanni Alberto Agnelli.

Frieda's phenomenal success is down to his deep understanding not only of hair and the haircare industry but also the sorts of relationships people have with their hair.

"Hair is really funny stuff," he once told a reporter. "Most people don't like their hair."

Frizz Ease, which launched in the early 1990s and became a global phenomenon, "changed women's lives", Linda Wells, then editor-in-chief of Allure, has said. 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 said, that "there was nothing for frizzy hair, no one even said 'frizz' - we created the category".

A game-changing moment came when he went on a British TV show to demonstrate his product, applying it to a model's roots and then blow-drying, which reportedly led to viewers flooding the phone lines when they saw the results.

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