Beau Jessup, the daughter of Loose Women star Lisa Maxwell, has died unexpectedly at the age of 27 while studying at Columbia University in New York. Beau, who had built a successful baby-naming website as a teenager, was a master's student at the university's journalism school.
A Teenage Business Prodigy
Beau first made headlines around the world after launching her own business at just 16. The idea for Specialname.cn came after a chance encounter during a trip to China with her father, when 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 was inspired to turn the request into a business, creating a website which 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, with her story going viral after being featured by BBC Online News.
Global Recognition and Continued Success
By September 2016, her story had appeared in 187 newspapers across 22 countries. Beau went on to give 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 Beau appearing on BBC One's The One Show alongside Sir Richard Branson and speaking at the 2017 AllBright FoundHER Festival. She was also named among BusinessCloud's Top 101 Female Founders of Tech in 2017, before making its 35 Under 35 list the following year.
Business Growth and Education
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 worked by asking parents to select five characteristics they wanted their child to embody from a list of 12, with an algorithm then suggesting 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 get the business started.
Despite her success, 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, and said she 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.
Tributes and Legacy
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.
