Kathleen Privett, 93, has decided to close the hairdressers in Drayton, Portsmouth, which her father started in 1945.
Mrs Privett said she would miss the "personal contact" with customers, who often shared secrets about their lives.
She said: "It won't sink in for a while. I expect I shall have a little cry."
Widowed at the age of 28, she took over Maison Drayton in Havant Road when her father, Samuel Whitmore Smith, died in 1962.
She worked with her daughter Barbara Evans, 70, and daughter-in-law, Pat Privett, 68, who have also decided to retire.
Mrs Privett said she stopped cutting hair because of her osteoporosis 10 years ago but had not closed the salon until now because of her love for the business.
She said: "It's the customers who make it. The things that people told you, that you can't share.
"How a few of them end up with divorce, the illnesses they've got. They become more than a customer."
A hairdresser has spent her final day at the salon she has worked in for the last 72 years.