The 10 Most Influential Women in Beauty – Beauty With Brains – Daily Glow. (original article no longer exists unfortunately)
If you’ve ever wondered how today’s and yesterday’s beauty brands got their start, take a minute to look at The Daily Glow’s brief history and photos of the visionary women who created them.
Over the past few years, I saw a couple of documentaries on PBS about the early days of beauty brands that really had an impact on me.
- The first one, shown during Black History Month a while back, told the story of Madam C.J. Walker, illiterate daughter of recently freed slaves who started her business at the turn of the 20th century creating haircare products for African-American women. She became America’s first self-made woman millionaire. Amazing. The documentary was reissued as “Indiana Legends: Madam C.J. Walker”, based on award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s 1987 documentary “Two Dollars and a Dream”.
- The second one, “The Powder and The Glory” by Grossman and Reisman, chronicled the not-so-friendly rivalry in the first half of the 20th century between Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein, America’s first ladies of modern cosmetics.
I hope they become available again to view on PBS TV (they’re available for purchase). Both documentaries are inspiring and fascinating to watch.
So, click on the link above and get to know the stories of the women entrepreneurs in beauty, some of whom made it against all odds.
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I was surprised to learn recently that the woman who was a founder at Cisco (the computer router company that has been wildly successful, and who was later fired by the company) went on to found Urban Decay cosmetics, among other things! Would love to learn more about her.
Hey, thanks for “introducing” me to Sandy Lerner, an amazingly creative woman and “jill-of-all-trades”! Here’s the link to an interview with her from December in Inc.: http://www.inc.com/jeremy-quittner/sandy-lerner-cisco-urban-decay-jane-austen.html
As you’d expect, she’s been very busy since she left Cisco and then sold Urban Decay in 2000 to LVMH. L’Oreal recently bought Urban Decay from the current owners for $350MM. At any rate, her characterization of the Urban Decay brand is quite interesting (“for the working woman”) and much different from the way I would’ve described it.
She wrote a sequel to Jane Austen that she self-published (I’ll check into that!), and now she’s doing organic farming, a business that she grew up in.
And speaking of Urban Decay, their Friends & Family sale — 20% off — goes until 2/17. For shopping online enter: FFSPRING13. It’s a good time to stock up on Naked, and I love their eyeliner pencils (esp 24/7, creamy & smooth, not drying at all)