Elizabeth Arden

Elizabeth Arden built the other half of the modern cosmetics industry, spent fifty years at war with Helena Rubinstein, and never once met her. She was born Florence Nightingale Graham on a farm in Ontario, dropped out of nursing training, and went to New York in 1908 with almost nothing. She opened a salon on Fifth Avenue in 1910 with a red door that became the brand, and made her fortune on two propositions: that respectable women could wear visible makeup, which in 1912 they largely could not, and that skincare should be a daily ritual of cleansing, toning and moisturising - a sequence she effectively invented and which the industry still sells. She marched in the 1912 suffrage parade handing out red lipstick, which became a suffragist emblem. The rivalry with Rubinstein ran through poaching each other's executives, copying each other's product lines, and buying each other's advertising slots; Arden hired Rubinstein's former husband, and Rubinstein hired eleven of Arden's salespeople in one raid. She also bred thoroughbreds seriously, won the Kentucky Derby in 1947, and treated her horses with her own face creams. She ran the company personally until she died at eighty-seven, owned all of it, and left an estate that had to be broken up to pay the tax. The company was sold after her death and the brand still carries her invented name. Her horse Jet Pilot won the Derby and she was on the cover of Time in 1946 for the stable rather than the cosmetics. She employed more women in senior positions than almost any American company of the period.

• Lived: 1878 CE – 1966 CE
• Nationality: Canadian
• Roles: other