A prominent East Anglian businesswoman and founder of the Yarmouth Brahams department store, has died aged 90. Faye Brahams was born in London in 1915 and grew up in both Ilford and Peacehaven in Sussex.

A prominent East Anglian businesswoman and founder of the Yarmouth Brahams department store, has died aged 90.

Faye Brahams was born in London in 1915 and grew up in both Ilford and Peacehaven in Sussex.

As a young woman she trained in educational psychology at Maudsley and Bethlehem Hospital and later used her training to work with teenagers.

But soon after meeting and marrying her entrepreneurial husband Leslie in 1950, the couple moved to Norfolk.

Within nine years Mrs Brahams had left her career, giving up her job at the Norwich Child Guidance Clinic, to help her husband set up business.

In 1959 the husband and wife team bought Kerridges in Yarmouth, which they renamed Brahams and turned it into a profitable department store specialising in fashion and furniture.

Through the 1960s the business expanded to include the Tuttles shop in Lowestoft and two further stores in Colchester and Ipswich.

The couple soon developed a reputation for treating staff very well, even helping some of their staff set up in businesses on their own.

But despite being successful, they always maintained that running a business well was more important that making profit.

Following Mr Brahams' retirement from business in 1980, the Brahams department store was sold to WH Smith, who still occupy the site today, and Mrs Brahams went on to form Brahams Fashion in Market Row, Yarmouth, with her ladies' fashions and childrenswear buyer Margaret King.

Alongside her business interests Mrs Brahams played a key role in the community, helping to start Great Yarmouth Samaritans where she worked for several years and volunteering as a reader for the talking newspaper for the blind.

Through her business and community interests she made many friends, who have described her and a lively and active person who always cared for others.

Mrs Brahams spent the final years of her life, following her retirement in 1996, with her new husband, and long time friend, Dr Roy Vining at their home in St Olaves, near Lowestoft.

She died of natural causes on Wednesday, January 11.

Her funeral will be at Norwich Crematorium on Monday at 12.45pm.