An actress who was one of the first to star in daytime soap operas now has her own line of cosmetics.

Vera Moore has been a trailblazer for most of her life – from being one of the first black actresses with a contract role on a soap opera to founding the first black-owned business in the Green Acres shopping mall.

“We came from a very poor family. My mother was a domestic worker, she went to secondary school. My father was a carrier, he could not read. But I always knew I could because she always said, ‘You want to go, you can do it,’ Moore said.

Moore says her strong family foundation led her to study singing and acting, which landed her a coveted role on the soap opera “Another World.”

“When I started getting letters from young women saying, ‘I want to be a nurse, I want to be like you, Linda Metcalf’ – that was the name of the character – I mean I knew I had a impact because it was all positive, it was positive things that people were seeing,” she says.

Moore says she launched her own cosmetics line after seeing a void in the market for black women. When she heard that the Green Acres shopping center in Valley Stream was expanding, she was determined to be a part of it.

Moore’s business had been in the mall for 25 years.

“The Green Acres Mall was one of the greatest things I’ve ever done,” she says.

Moore says she hopes sharing her story will let others know that hard work and persistence pays off.