Our Muse

Henrietta "Henny" was born in 1917 in a hollow at the edge of an Eastern Pennsylvania mining village. When not chasing chickens and generally causing mayhem, she loved to forage the hills for wild mushrooms, berries, and herbs. From her Bohemian father, Henny learned the medicinal uses of these plants. Her handsome Polish mother, meanwhile, regularly served as a patient test subject for her child's "beauty" preparations.

When Henny was 14, she was struck with tuberculosis and sent to a sanatorium in the Western part of the state. Here she made many friends with whom she shared her love of foraging. The girls concocted remedies not only to support their health and recovery, but to enhance their beauty. One of the girls, a Pittsburgh steel heiress, introduced Henny to what she would forever after refer to as "life's finer things."

When Henny left the sanatorium at 18, she met and married the dashing Albert Fehr -- a young Pennsylvania German coal miner who was enamored of this lanky lady with knobby knees and buck teeth. Ever resourceful, Henny made a gracious home on what little they had, and supplemented it by selling her apothecary creations to the locals for a pittance. Eventually, after Albert was promoted to mine foreman, Henny was able to add fine European perfumes and cosmetics to her toilette.

The couple never had children, and sadly, Albert died early of "the black lung." But Henny lived to the ripe age of 95 and became "Aunt Henny" to two generations of children in her patch town. To some of the local girls, she passed along her foraging and compounding skills and her love of "life's finer things". Today, those girls are women, and we are the heads, hands, and hearts behind HENNY FAIRE Co.