Leon's Beauty School in Greensboro to close after 63 years

Leon's Beauty School will close its Greensboro campus on Dec. 31, ending 63 years of instruction that the school says has produced more than 10,000 beauty professionals. The shutdown removes one of the Triad's longest-running hands-on paths into cosmetology, esthetics and salon ownership, just as current students and aspiring barbers and stylists lose a longtime local training option at 1305 Coliseum Boulevard.

The school said the decision follows years of regulatory, funding and accreditation challenges. Leadership said it explored ways to stay financially sustainable, including options tied to student loan programs, but chose not to abandon a long-standing principle that students should be able to complete their education without taking on debt. Leon's financial-aid page says it accepts Pell Grants and 529 college savings plan payments, but does not participate in federal student loan programs, private loan companies or in-house financing.

That stance helped define Leon's place in Greensboro's beauty economy. The school says it trains cosmetologists, estheticians, teachers and future salon owners, and its owner said the legacy will continue through alumni and through Leon's Style Salons, which has four locations across the region. For Greensboro and Guilford County, the closing means one less place where students can move from classroom hours to state licensing and then into work in local salons, barbershops and independent shops.

Leon's history reaches back to 1963, when Leon Oldham founded the school on Tate Street as Maison de Paris College. It moved to Walker Avenue in 1974 and was renamed Leon's Beauty School in 1977. The broader company history says Leon's Style Salons began in 1945 as a six-chair beauty salon on Tate Street, a reminder that the school grew out of a family business that helped shape the city's beauty-industry footprint for decades.

A third-party school profile lists Leon's as having about 102 undergraduate students and a 79% graduation rate, underscoring how small and specialized the institution has remained. That scale is part of why the closure lands so hard: Leon's had also been one of the local places able to absorb students after Health and Style Institute closed earlier in 2026, leaving fewer nearby options for people trying to enter the trade without leaving Greensboro.

As Leon's winds down operations, the gap will be felt most in the workforce pipeline it helped build. In a city where beauty careers often lead to self-employment, booth rental and Black-owned salon businesses, losing a school with this kind of reach changes who gets trained, who gets licensed and who gets a shot at opening the next shop.