diff --git a/src/builtins/Transformers.jl b/src/builtins/Transformers.jl
index 4f4b6a9a..cfeefcd1 100644
--- a/src/builtins/Transformers.jl
+++ b/src/builtins/Transformers.jl
@@ -860,7 +860,7 @@ function MMI.fit(transformer::OneHotEncoder, verbosity::Int, X)
         if T <: allowed_scitypes && ftr in specified_features
             ref_name_pairs_given_feature[ftr] = Pair{<:Unsigned,Symbol}[]
             shift = transformer.drop_last ? 1 : 0
-            levels = classes(first(col))
+            levels = classes(col)
             fitted_levels_given_feature[ftr] = levels
             if verbosity > 0
                 @info "Spawning $(length(levels)-shift) sub-features "*
diff --git a/test/builtins/Transformers.jl b/test/builtins/Transformers.jl
index ee8e403c..f4d19933 100644
--- a/test/builtins/Transformers.jl
+++ b/test/builtins/Transformers.jl
@@ -522,6 +522,16 @@ end
     @test_throws Exception Xt.favourite_number__10
     @test_throws Exception Xt.name__Mary
     @test report.new_features == collect(MLJBase.schema(Xt).names)
+
+    # Test when the first value is missing
+    X = (name=categorical([missing, "John", "Mary", "John"]),)
+    t  = OneHotEncoder()
+    f, _, _ = MLJBase.fit(t, 0, X)
+    Xt = MLJBase.transform(t, f, X)
+    @test Xt.name__John[1] === Xt.name__Mary[1] === missing
+    @test Xt.name__John[2:end] == Union{Missing, Float64}[1.0, 0.0, 1.0]
+    @test Xt.name__Mary[2:end] == Union{Missing, Float64}[0.0, 1.0, 0.0]
+
 end