Lena Richard (1892–1950)

Lena Richard was a chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and frozen food entrepreneur. In 1949, she became the first African American woman to host her own television cooking show.

Richard was born on September 9, 1892, to Francoise Laurent and Jean Pierre Paul in New Roads, Louisiana. At a young age, her family moved to New Orleans, where her mother and aunt worked as domestic servants for Alice and Nugent Vairin. After school, Lena often helped them in the kitchen, a routine that continued until she graduated from high school.

After graduation, the Vairins hired her to cater events where she prepared lunches and dinners. Recognizing her culinary talent, they sponsored her education at the Fannie Farmer School of Cookery in Boston, Massachusetts. After completing her studies, Richard returned to New Orleans and launched a catering business, offering services for parties, weddings, and debutante balls.

Over the years she established multiple businesses and worked as a cook at the Orleans Club, an elite organization for white women. In 1937, she and her daughter, Marie Richard, opened a cooking school to help Black students gain the skills needed to become successful business owners. Some of Lena Richard’s specialties included turtle soup, potato pancakes, crawfish bisque, stewed eggs and oysters, a 16-pound fruitcake, and lamb chops with pineapple.

In 1939, Richard published her first cookbook, Lena Richard’s Cook Book, which featured traditional recipes contributed by Black cooks and celebrated the richness of Creole cuisine. It also included Southern dishes as well as recipes for chocolate waffles, asparagus sandwiches, and tea dainties. A year later, the cookbook was reissued by Houghton Mifflin Company (now Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) under the new title New Orleans Cook Book.

To promote her cookbook, Richard traveled across the country, selling 700 copies for $2 each during a one-month trip. Her work gained national recognition, earning features in the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. She later served as head chef at the Bird and Bottle Inn in Garrison, New York, for about a year before returning to New Orleans, where she opened Lena’s Eatery in 1941.

From 1943 to 1945, Richard worked as a chef at the Travis House in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she cooked for dignitaries and military leaders. She also launched a frozen food business, creating fully cooked, packaged dinners that were shipped across the United States.

In 1949, she opened another restaurant called The Gumbo House, which employed many members of her family. She was known for serving up to 54 gallons of gumbo each week to both Black and white customers. That same year, she began hosting a 30-minute cooking television show titled Lena Richard’s New Orleans Cook Book. The program, which aired twice weekly on WDSU in New Orleans, featured Richard and her assistant, Marie Matthews, demonstrating recipes, mostly Creole cuisine, from her cookbook. With this show, Richard became the first African American to host a cooking program on television.

Lena Richard died on November 27, 1950 of a heart attack in New Orleans at the age of 58. The day before her death, she had cooked all day at her restaurant following a church service. She returned home feeling unwell and passed away the next day.

Richard was married to Percival Richard in 1914. They had one daughter, Marie Richard.

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