Phyllis E. Madanian stands behind a glass case filled with fudge.

There’s green peppermint fudge, cappuccino fudge that’s foamy white with cinnamon brown sprinkled on top, fudge with giant malted milk balls popping out of the top. There’s a brand new flavor, a creamy brown Milky Way fudge.

Madanian spends her days making and selling fudge. She goes through 150 pounds a week at Billings & Stover Apothecary, the gritty, old-fashioned Brattle Street soda fountain she owns and operates.

For the past 140 years, Billings & Stover has been a drug store that filled prescriptions at the back counter and sold cosmetics, exotic perfumes and ice cream in the front.

Until recently. When business slowed two years ago, Madanian stopped selling drugs and turned the prescription counter into a kitchen. She added a bakery, expanded the cosmetics counter and kept going.

But now the woman who struggled to keep Billings & Stover alive in recent years has announced the store will close its doors forever Feb. 28.

Madanian’s father, a Boston pharmacist, bought the store in 1975 and it’s been a part of her life ever since. Indeed, she practically grew up in pharmacies—her earliest memory is of spinning on the fountain stools in her father’s Boston shop. But after a life in the business, she decided last month she couldn’t afford to keep going on her own.

“Maybe it’s old school of me, but [my father] raised me believing that if you put enough elbow grease into it, you’re going to stay afloat,” she says. “This is a true independent. I’m the sole proprietor. I couldn’t have somebody telling me what to do, after being independent for so long.”

“I don’t even take home a pay check anymore,” she adds. “At one point, I just realized I can’t afford to work here anymore. Isn’t that ridiculous? Not being able to afford to work?”

Billings & Stover isn’t a typical drug store.

In the middle of the store sits a cardboard box filled with oversize, bug-eyed sunglasses, straight from the ’70s. On shelves lining the walls are arrayed Marilyn Monroe lunchboxes and statuettes of Elvis Presley standing next to a Harley Davidson motorbike. Behind the counter, a shelf holds fancy hairbrushes, combs and perfumes that can usually be found only in Europe.

“I do all the ordering,” Madanian says. “I like to order things that are practical but will also bring a smile to people’s faces.”

According to Madanian, these are the kinds of unusual products people come to Billings & Stover just to buy.

“We don’t sell anything here you could buy at CVS,” she says. “We don’t sell Ivory soap. We could be giving it away, nobody would take it here.”

Billings & Stover has a devoted following among locals, Madanian says. And lately client after client has come in offering her their sympathy over the store’s closing.