Born in Poland, but raised in England, Barbara Hulanicki began her career in fashion in the early 1960's working as a freelance fashion illustrator covering all the important fashion collections for major publications of the day from Women's Wear Daily, British Vogue, to The Times and The Observer. In 1964 she founded, with her late husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, the boutique Biba. It began as a small mail order business featured in the Daily Mirror.
Eventually a pink gingham dress with a matching head band strikes a chord with the public and sells thousands of units enabling the pair to open a store which soon became a hang out for artists, film stars and rock musicians boasting Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithful and David Bowie as regulars. Biba closed in 1976 and Hulanicki continued to work in fashion as a designer for brands such as Cacharel and Fiorucci. Hulanicki now resides in Miami where she is a designer of interiors.