Beau Jessup, daughter of Loose Women star Lisa Maxwell, dies aged 27, Digi Mart USA News: The late daughter of Loose Women star Lisa Maxwell, who died aged 27, was a teenage business sensation. Beau Jessup made thousands of pounds helping Chinese parents name their babies before her death.
The Bill actress has been left devastated after Beau passed away unexpectedly while studying at Columbia University in New York. At just 16, Beau launched her own business, Specialname.cn, after a chance encounter during a trip to China with her father.
One of his business associates asked Beau to help choose an English name for her three-year-old daughter, explaining that many Chinese families also wanted a Western name for their children. Beau turned the request into a website that suggested culturally appropriate English names based on the qualities parents hoped their children would have.
The idea quickly took off, and according to her website she named 250,000 Chinese babies in the first four months. Her story went viral after being featured by BBC Online News.
By September 2016, it had appeared in 187 newspapers across 22 countries.
Beau gave a TEDx Talk in October that year, explaining how she transformed a simple idea into an international business. The talk has since been viewed more than 120,000 times and used in schools as an inspirational teaching tool.
Her success continued with an appearance on BBC One’s The One Show alongside Sir Richard Branson and a speech at the 2017 AllBright FoundHER Festival. She was named among BusinessCloud’s Top 101 Female Founders of Tech in 2017, and made its 35 Under 35 list the following year.
In 2019, aged 19, Beau told CNBC Make It that she had named more than 677,000 babies through Special Name and generated estimated revenues of over £300,000. The website asked parents to select five characteristics from a list of 12, and an algorithm then suggested three names matching their choices. Beau had initially offered the service for free before introducing a 60p charge after naming 162,000 babies.
She used the money to help pay her university fees, invest in property and repay the £1,500 loan she had borrowed from her father to start the business.
Beau continued her education, studying social anthropology at the London School of Economics before moving to Cambridge and later Columbia University’s journalism school. In a profile on her website, she described herself as an entrepreneur and public speaker who enjoyed encouraging people to recognise similarities between cultures.
Her ambition was to use journalism to explore people’s experiences and the stories told about them.
Columbia Journalism School announced her death on Wednesday (November 11), paying tribute to Beau as a student in its master’s programme. Her mother Lisa, who starred in The Bill for seven years and appeared on Loose Women, had previously shared her pride in Beau’s achievements, congratulating her when she joined Columbia’s Class of 2027 in September.
No further details about Beau’s death have been released.
