Essence Communications Inc. was founded in 1968 by four Black men — banker Edward Lewis, insurance salesman Clarence O. Smith, ad salesman Jonathan Blount, and graphics consultant Cecil Hollingsworth — who had identified something the entire mainstream magazine industry had overlooked: there was no general-interest magazine built for Black women. Lewis later described the moment plainly: “It was about creating our own destiny in regards to the press,” founded amid the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy and the 1968 Olympics, when, in his words, “there was a desire to get young blacks into the media business.” The founders financed the venture initially with a $13,000 loan from Freedom National Bank, the bank Jackie Robinson had helped establish, supplemented by money from family, friends, and credit cards. The magazine’s working title was Sapphire before the founders settled on Essence.
The first issue reached newsstands in May 1970, featuring a Black woman crowned with an Afro on its cover. Photographer Gordon Parks served as the magazine’s first editorial director. The startup years were difficult — funding remained precarious and three editors-in-chief left within the first year — until Marcia Ann Gillespie took over as editor-in-chief in 1971 and stabilized the publication’s direction. Circulation grew from an initial 50,000 copies a month toward more than a million. Susan L. Taylor, who had started at the magazine as a freelance fashion and beauty editor, became editor-in-chief in 1981 and held the role for nearly two decades, becoming one of the most recognized figures in Black media.
Essence remained Black-owned for 34 years — longer than almost any comparable Black media company of its era — before Time Inc. purchased a 49 percent stake from founders Smith and Lewis in 2000. In 2005, Time Inc. acquired the remaining 51 percent, making Essence, for the first time in its history, fully owned by a white-owned corporation. Employees and readers documented repeated complaints of editorial interference during the Time ownership period, including disputes over how Black women were portrayed in the magazine’s pages. In January 2018, Time Inc. sold Essence Communications to Essence Ventures LLC, a company founded by Liberian entrepreneur and Shea Moisture founder Richelieu Dennis specifically to acquire the brand before Time Inc.’s own sale to Meredith Corporation closed — returning Essence to Black ownership and shifting its executive leadership to 100 percent Black women, a structural change the company described as moving Black women “from solely a leadership position to a co-ownership position.” Essence continues publishing today, alongside the Essence Festival, one of the largest annual gatherings centered on Black culture in the United States.