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Maxine Powell was born Maxine Blair in Texarkana, Texas, in 1915 and raised by an aunt in Chicago. After graduating from Hyde Park High School in 1933, she attended Madam C.J. Walker’s School of Beauty Culture, worked as a manicurist to pay for acting lessons, studied dance and elocution, and worked as a model and as a personal maid for wealthy families. She even staged a one-woman show at the Chicago Theater, An Evening with Maxine Powell, before moving to Detroit in 1945.

In 1951 she opened the Maxine Powell Finishing and Modeling School, and in 1953 she bought a house that became the largest banquet facility open to African Americans in Detroit. She met Berry Gordy through his family’s printing business, which printed programs for her fashion shows. After consulting informally, she closed her school in 1964 to work for Motown full time and by 1966 headed its artist development department, coaching the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, the Miracles and the Jackson 5 so they would be fit for kings and queens.

• Her mandatory two-hour classes had artists walk with blocks on their heads, sit without looking at the chair and step out of limousines gracefully.
• As early costumer for the Supremes, she bought bridal gowns, cut off the trains, dyed them and added beading for the stage.
• Mary Wilson said Powell gave the group tools for life, not just stage presence.
• She left Motown in 1969 and taught personal development at Wayne County Community College from 1971 to 1985.
• She died of natural causes in October 2013 at the age of 98.