Like the products at the heart of her commercial empire, Helena Rubinstein built on a good foundation.
She also wasn’t above using a little cosmetic enhancement to help boost business.
Born the oldest of eight girls in 1872, Chaja Rubinstein emigrated from Poland to Australia in her late teens. She had almost no money — but did have a suitcase filled with jars of "beauty cream" said to be made from rare herbs known to a certain chemist in Krakow. When her giveaways were a hit, she imported more cream to sell, then got financial backing to open shops and launch a full line of "Helena Rubinstein" cosmetic products. Over the next decade, Rubinstein became one of the first modern-day female entrepreneurs and a millionaire, with salons in the most exclusive parts of London and Paris.
In 1915, “Madame,” as she now insisted on being called, left Europe for New York. She opened a flagship salon and started a fierce public rivalry with rival cosmetics queen Elizabeth Arden. But she proved even more skilled at boardroom maneuvering: In the late 1920s, she sold her American business to Lehman Brothers for about $100 million today; she bought it back for a fraction of that after the Great Depression and opened salons across the country.
By then, Madame understood the power of surface appearances to sway consumers: She wore white lab coats in ads to boost the science angle to her cosmetics and overpriced products to make them seem more “must-have.” She died one of the world’s richest women in 1965, leaving behind a namesake foundation that donated some $130 million to education, arts and community health causes over 60 years.
Meanwhile, one of her earliest ad slogans rang the truest:
“Beauty is Power.”
About the Author
