Queen of Green's troubled reign

Anita Roddick OBE, who has announced her decision to step down from the day-to-day running of the Body Shop to become joint chairman with her husband Gordon, has become Britain's most recognisable businesswoman.

After opening the first Body Shop in Brighton in 1976, the Queen of Green became synonymous with a kind of caring capitalism that aimed to be popular with consumers - and fair to its Third World suppliers.

But she has also faced consistent criticism over what some have seen as her condescending colonial attitudes ... as well as her business methods.

Claiming not to be interested in the "beauty industry" she has nevertheless been largely responsible for the high street boom in natural beauty products which is now threatening Body Shop's own profits.

'Too big to manage'

The company's shares have been under pressure, reflecting the investment communities' disenchantment with its performance.

Gordon Roddick said his wife had wanted to step aside, but she would continue to act as the face of the business to the outside world.

He said it was a classic case of entrepreneurs whose business had become too big for them to manage.

"Reality dictates that at this size of business we really are not good at line management."

Mr Roddick acknowledged that Body Shop's shareholders had been looking for "positive and demonstrable" change at the group, whose shares hit a three-year low of 108p in March. They stood at 122p on Tuesday.

The company expanded throughout the 1970s and 1980s into a chain of more than 1,600 shops, many of them operated by franchise holders.

Green claims disputed

Mrs Roddick is now one of the richest women in Britain, with a 25% stake in the business, worth around £57m.

But she has had to fight several times to demonstrate the truth of the "green" claims made for her products.

In 1994 she won a libel case against Channel 4 after it claimed that some Body Shop cosmetics contained animal products, in contravention of the company's "Against Animal Testing" slogan.

In recent years, expansion into areas such as America, the Far East and Continental Europe has proved less than a complete success.

In America, several years of poor performance led to Tuesday's announcement that the business there will become a joint venture with shoe retailer Bellamy Retail Group.

But she has emphatically rejected suggestions that she should hand over the running of the business to someone else.

"The Body Shop is my child, my embryo. Everybody needs a passion," she assured one interviewer last October.