Very little is known about Florence Wall&8217;s early life. She was born about 1893 in Paterson, New Jersey. She graduated in 1913 from St. Elizabeth College with a B.A. in chemistry and B.Ed. in education. Her first job was teaching high school science.

During World War I she began her long career in industry. Wall carried out chemical analyses on ore samples at the Radium Luminous Material Corporation in Orange, NJ. Suffering from exhaustion due to overwork and possibly contact with radium, she quit in less than a year. She began a new job at Seydel Manufacturing Company where she worked on benzoic acid derivatives. Because of the high quality of her work, Florence Wall was offered a position to run the large-scale production at the Fellows Company. The company closed at the end of the war. Wall moved to the Ricketts Laboratory where she was again doing analytical work and then on to the U.S. Motor Fuel Corporation to investigate a new catalyst for cracking hydrocarbons. When she discovered that the claims were fraudulent and recommended the investigations be stopped, she, of course, lost her job. Wall spent the next two years teaching chemistry in Havana, Cuba.

In 1924 Florence Wall returned to the U.S. and accepted a position as a cosmetic chemist. She stayed in the industry, primarily as a consultant cosmetic chemist. She wrote two classic texts in the field of cosmetic chemistry that earned her an excellent reputation. In addition to writing papers, she lectured on cosmetics at New York University from 1936 to 1938. In 1938 she was awarded her M.A. in chemistry from New York University.

Florence E. Wall was one of the first women elected to Fellowship in the American Institute of Chemists (1923). She was also the first woman to receive the Maison G. de Navarre Medal Award of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists (1956). She was inducted into the Cosmetology Hall of Fame in 1965.

Florence Wall was active in chemistry well into her eighties. She died in Fairfield, Connecticut on October 2, 1988 at the age of 95.

1. Society of Cosmetic Chemists: Awards and Fellowships

1. Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science; Ogilvie, Marilyn; Harvey, Joy, Eds.; Routledge: New York, 2000; Vol. 2, L–Z; p 1342.
2. Rayner-Canham, Marelene; Rayner-Canham, Geoffrey. Women in Chemistry: Their Changing Roles from Alchemical Times to the Mid-Twentieth Century; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1988; pp 169–171.
3. New York Times, October 12, 1988, p D27.