Brownie Wise: The Woman Tupperware Tried to Erase
In 1954, a Kissimmee saleswoman became the first woman to ever appear on the cover of Business Week. Four years later, her boss buried copies of her autobiography in a pit behind company headquarters and pretended she never existed.
From Detroit to Kissimmee
Brownie Wise was born in Buford, Georgia, in 1913 and spent her early career in Detroit as a secretary and newspaper columnist. After World War II, she started selling plastic containers made by a quiet New England inventor named Earl Tupper. The product was clever (an airtight “burping” seal that kept food fresh), but nobody was buying it off store shelves. Wise had a different idea: sell it at home parties, where a host could demonstrate the seal, serve snacks, and turn skeptical neighbors into customers. It worked so well that Tupper hired her as vice president in 1951 and moved the entire operation to Kissimmee at her suggestion.
9,000 Saleswomen and a Buried Book
By 1954, Wise had grown Tupperware’s sales force from 200 independent dealers to more than 9,000. She invented the company’s annual Jubilee, a four-day spectacle in Kissimmee where top sellers dug for buried prizes like televisions and diamond rings. Her face landed on the cover of Business Week, a first for any woman. But the attention made Earl Tupper jealous. In January 1958, he fired her. She held no company stock. Her lakeside Kissimmee house belonged to the company. Tupper settled her lawsuit for $30,000, scrubbed her name from corporate records, and literally buried remaining copies of her book in a pit near the headquarters she had built. He then sold Tupperware for $16 million and left the country.
Where to Find Her Legacy
Wise stayed in Kissimmee for the rest of her life, working in cosmetics consulting and real estate until her death in 1992. In 2016, Tupperware donated $200,000 to establish Brownie Wise Park on an island in Lake Tohopekaliga. Journalist Bob Kealing’s book Life of the Party tells her full story. And every direct sales party, from candles to cookware, traces its playbook back to a woman who proved you could build an empire from a living room in Kissimmee.
