Ruth Handler

Ruth Marianna Handler (born Mosko; November 4, 1916 – April 27, 2002) was an American businesswoman and inventor. She is most famous for creating the Barbie doll in 1959 and for co-founding Mattel with her husband Elliot, where she served as its first president from 1945 to 1973.

Handler was born in Denver, Colorado, to Polish-Jewish immigrants. The youngest of ten children, she was sent to live with her older sister Sarah at six months old and stayed there until age 19, developing an interest in business while working at Sarah’s drugstore. In 1932, she fell in love with art student Izzy Handler. During her sophomore year at the University of Denver, she moved to Los Angeles for a job at Paramount Studio. She married Izzy in 1938 in Denver, and after returning to California, encouraged him to go by his middle name, Elliot. She returned to Paramount while he worked as a lighting fixture designer.

Elliot later took up furniture-making using Lucite and Plexiglas. At Ruth’s suggestion, they started a furniture business, with Ruth handling sales and securing contracts with companies like Douglas Aircraft. Businessman Harold “Matt” Matson joined them, and they renamed the company Mattel by combining “Matson” and “Elliot.” (Elliot later noted they couldn’t figure out how to include Ruth’s name.) After World War II ended, the company shifted from furniture to toys, eventually focusing on toy manufacturing.

Watching her daughter Barbara and friends play with paper dolls and act out adult scenarios, Handler saw a gap in the market: available dolls were mostly babies or toddlers, none resembling adults. On a 1956 trip to Europe with Barbara and son Kenneth, she came across the German Bild Lilli doll. (Handler gave conflicting accounts of where she saw it—Lucerne, Zürich, or Vienna.) The adult-shaped doll matched her idea. She bought three, gave one to Barbara, and brought the others to Mattel. The Lilli doll, based on a comic strip character, had been sold in Germany since 1955 and was popular with children who bought separate outfits. Back in the U.S., Handler redesigned the doll with help from inventor Jack Ryan. She named it “Barbie” after her daughter and said Barbie was from Willows, Wisconsin. The doll debuted on March 9, 1959, at the American International Toy Fair in New York City, costing $3 and selling 300,000 units in its first year.