The foundation features stories of children and young men and women with vitiligo, an autoimmune condition with no known cure in which the body attacks the cells that give skin its color. People with the condition have white patches or irregular shapes on the skin that can grow and spread.

For children with the condition, a doll with a face that looks like theirs could help them with the social stigma associated with vitiligo, Ms. Pavlides said.

“It shows children that if they can make a doll that looks like them then they’re O.K.,” said Ms. Pavlides, 74, whose condition was diagnosed when she was 22. She remembers store clerks refusing to take money from her hand.

Once one of the world’s top-selling dolls, Barbie struggled to stay relevant in the early 2000s as other toy companies began manufacturing dolls that showed more diversity and as parents steered their children away from a doll that had become an emblem of unrealistic and even toxic beauty. In 2010, the company was forced to apologize for a book about Barbie and computers.

In the book, “I Can Be a Computer Engineer,” Barbie laughingly explained to her kid sister, Skipper, that she could design only a puppy on her laptop.