Florence Melton, who died Saturday at 95, invented the foam-soled and washable slipper and made a fortune.

While investigating foam latex as a possible material for her patented women’s shoulder pad, Melton, the cofounder of the R.G. Barry Corp. of Columbus, Ohio, hit on using the material to line slippers.

Marketed first as Angel Treads and later as Dearfoams, the slippers were a huge hit. More than 1 billion have been sold, according to the company.

“Florence Zacks Melton was a remarkable individual with an amazing lifetime of achievement, not the least of which was taking care of millions of tired feet,” the president and chief executive officer of R.G. Barry Corporation, Greg Tunney, said.

Born November 6, 1911, in Philadelphia, Florence grew up so poor that her parents could not even afford to buy her a doll, she once told the Columbus Dispatch. After working at a local Woolworth’s from age 13, she left high school several months shy of graduation to help support her family. At 19, she married Aaron Zacks, and the couple moved to Columbus, where he worked as a merchandiser for a department store.

A housewife with the sensibility of a tinker, she found herself attracted to issues of domestic engineering, and shoulder pads for women’s suits, a hot item in the military-tinged fashions of the wartime years, were an obvious target. Sewn into the shoulders of a garment, they could be destroyed by washing and had to be painstakingly resewn into place. Better, Melton thought, to wear the pad directly on the shoulder. She eventually patented a design that hooked into a woman’s brassiere strap. It was marketed by her husband — “a brilliant man when it came to retail,” she once said — under the brand name Shoulda Shams.

Foam latex had been developed for various armed forces applications during World War II, and with the war over, rubber companies such as Firestone in Akron were pushing it for civilian uses.

“I told my husband that the best use of this stuff is to walk on it,” Melton told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel in 2001.

The slippers sold so well that the couple founded R.G. Barry Corp., named for their sons and the son of an early investor. Early products included adjustable seat covers, neck pillows, and insulated pizza delivery boxes.

In addition to being the leading manufacturer of slippers in America – the company claims a current market share of 40% – R.G. Barry produces various other kinds of casual footwear, such as clogs and booties. Sales were just north of $100 million last year.

Aaron Zacks died in 1966, and in 1968 she was remarried, to Samuel Melton, an Ohio stainless steel fittings tycoon and philanthropist who served on the boards of many national Jewish charities.

Passionate about Judaism and education, perhaps because hers had been interrupted, Florence Melton in 1986 founded the Florence Melton Adult Mini School, which teaches Jews about their heritage. The Jerusalem-based program claims 6,000 students worldwide. In recent years, Melton had been concentrating on bringing Jewish education to teenagers.