INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — A century after her death, Madam C.J. Walker is having a moment.

Her rags-to-riches story is the subject of a new Netflix miniseries, “Self Made,” that started streaming March 20.

Oscar winner Octavia Spencer plays the unlikely millionaire, an African American woman whose parents had been enslaved. Walker toiled as a laundress before building a black hair-care empire that led to vast wealth and influence. She amassed much of that in Indianapolis — a city that’s central to her story and a place that’s keeping her memory alive in ways big and small.

“I really hope the Hollywood version, which takes a lot of creative license, will encourage people to want to know more,” said Walker’s great-great-granddaughter A’Lelia Bundles, whose 2001 book “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker” inspired the show.

“The Nexflix series is exciting because a lot more people will know about Madam Walker, but it’s part of an overall matrix,” added Bundles, who grew up in Indy. “I’m equally as excited about the reopening of the Madam Walker Legacy Center and the fantastic exhibit at the Indiana Historical Society.”

Running through Jan. 23 of next year, the historical society’s Madam Walker exhibit at the Indiana History Center delivers a comprehensive yet concise overview of the woman born with the name Sarah Breedlove on a Louisiana cotton planation in 1867 — a woman widely credited as the country’s first female, self-made millionaire.

“The exhibit is cradle-to-grave, not just her time in Indy,” said Susan Hall-Dotson, coordinator of African American history at the historical society.

“She was more than just a millionaire,” Hall-Dotson said. “We show her life as a philanthropist, activist, businesswoman and mother.”

Interactive displays, videos and artifacts tell the story of Walker’s rise from washerwoman to creator of a hair-care product line spawned by her own struggles with alopecia. Visitors follow the footsteps of her peripatetic life as she bounced between cities such as St. Louis, where she met her second husband, Charles J. Walker (hence the name on her products), and Denver, Pittsburgh, New York and Indianapolis. The latter’s location as a transportation hub and its thriving black business community made it an ideal spot to relocate in 1910 and open the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Co. headquarters.

The exhibit features old newspaper ads and round tins of Madam C.J. Walker’s Vegetable Shampoo, Glossine and Wonderful Hair Grower. Despite some criticism to the contrary, Walker insisted her products were aimed at promoting the health and appearance of black women’s hair, not straightening it to conform to white beauty standards. Photos show some of the thousands of African Americans she enlisted in her army of Walker agents — women who were able to escape low-paying jobs and forge a path to financial independence by selling her wares as “hair culturists.”

A highlight of the exhibit takes visitors back in time. Actors in period costume channel the personas of Walker and her associates, fielding guests’ questions and demonstrating how to use the products that paved Walker’s way into the 1%.

The exhibit also shines a light on her struggles with racism — Walker took legal action after an Indianapolis theater charged her more money because of her skin color — and the considerable work she did to promote anti-lynching legislation, women’s suffrage and other causes.

“She wasn’t trying to become wealthy for the sake of being wealthy,” said Tyrone McKinley Freeman, assistant professor of philanthropic studies at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

His book, “Madam C.J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy During Jim Crow,” is coming out in October. “She wrote and spoke constantly about her responsibility to her race and gender,” he said.

Her largesse included a hefty $1,000 check to help build Indianapolis’ Senate Avenue YMCA for black men. A large picture of her next to Booker T. Washington and other dignitaries at the building’s 1913 dedication stands at a pocket park in Ransom Place Historic District, the city’s oldest African American neighborhood.

This residential area on the west side of downtown — Walker’s stately brick home at 640 N. West St. is long gone — got its name from her right-hand man, Freeman B. Ransom, an attorney and general manager of Walker Manufacturing Co. The small park at the corner of Camp and West St. Clair streets makes another worthy stop on a Madam Walker tour of Indy. Other diversions include artist Sonya Clark’s giant portrait of Walker made from thousands of hair combs. It hangs in the second-floor lobby of The Alexander hotel, where the bar Plat 99 recently added an “On My Own Ground” cocktail to its beverage menu in a nod to Walker.

In the Herron-Morton Place neighborhood, the cafe Foundry Provisions named its lunch basket special — grilled cheese and soup of the day — after Walker, the top vote-getter among customers who were asked which Indianapolis woman deserved the honor. (“We had too many sandwiches named after men,” a staffer explained.)

A far more significant tie to Walker can be found near Ransom Place, where a four-story building crowned with a “Walker Theatre” sign in big red letters commands the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street and Indiana Avenue, once the buzzing mecca of black culture and commerce in Indy. Walker bought the triangular parcel of land with an eye toward expanding her business. She died in 1919 in New York at age 51 before those plans could come to fruition. Her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, along with Ransom, saw her vision through.

Opened in 1927, the brown brick and terra-cotta structure with African-inspired Art Deco flourishes housed the company’s headquarters and manufacturing plant as well as a lavish theater, ballroom, beauty salon, coffee shop and more. Over time, this symbol of the local black community’s pride got worn down and largely fell out of use.

The curtain is about to rise again in June when the iconic flatiron building, renamed the Madam Walker Legacy Center, has its grand reopening after a two-year, $15 million renovation. The cultural arts center will offer entertainment as well as educational programming, especially the kind that can make a tangible difference in people’s lives, president Judith Thomas said.

“Madam was all about empowering people,” Thomas said. “I’d like to do things like have an art show in the ballroom with black artists and have information about grants that are available, and a series for women with female speakers with resources to help them apply for micro loans.”

Details are still in the works, but plans also call for offering tours of this National Historic Landmark, including some led by a man who was there when the theater opened.

“This was a famous corner back in the days of dancing, jazz and the jitterbug,” said Thomas Ridley, 97, who recently showed me around the theater while construction workers drilled and hammered.

He paused to scan the sprawling balcony through his wire-rimmed glasses, a wistful smile spreading across his face.

“This was a special place,” he said. “I’m glad they’re bringing it back.”