Helena Rubinstein
Helena Rubinstein (born Chaja Rubinstein; December 25, 1872 – April 1, 1965)[2] was a Polish and American businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist. A cosmetics entrepreneur, she was the founder and eponym of Helena Rubinstein Incorporated cosmetics company, which made her one of the world's richest women.[3]
Helena Rubinstein
April 1, 1965 (aged 92)
Polish[1]
Princess Gourielli, Madame Helena Rubinstein, Chaja Rubinstein
- Businesswoman
- philanthropist
- art collector
- cosmetician
Founder and eponym of Helena Rubinstein Incorporated cosmetics company
Move to Australia[edit]
After refusing an arranged marriage, Rubinstein emigrated from Poland to Australia in 1896, with no money and little English.[6] Her stylish clothes and milky complexion did not pass unnoticed among the town's ladies, however, and she soon found enthusiastic buyers for the jars of beauty cream in her luggage. She spotted a market where she began to make her own. A key ingredient of the cream, lanolin, was readily at hand.
Coleraine, in the Western Victoria region, where her uncle was a shopkeeper, might have been an "awful place" but was home to some 75 million sheep that secreted abundant quantities of lanolin. These sheep were the wealth of the nation and the Western District's vast mobs of merinos produced the finest wool in the land. To disguise the lanolin's pungent odour, Rubinstein experimented with lavender, pine bark, and water lilies.
Rubinstein had a falling out with her uncle, but after a stint as a bush governess began waitressing at the Winter Garden tearooms in Melbourne. There, she found an admirer willing to stump up the funds to launch her Crème Valaze, supposedly including herbs imported "from the Carpathian Mountains". It cost ten pence and sold for six shillings (72 pence). Known to her customers only as Helena, Rubinstein could soon afford to open a salon in fashionable Collins Street, selling glamour as a science to customers whose skin was "diagnosed" and a suitable treatment "prescribed".
Sydney was next, and within five years, Australian operations were profitable enough to finance a Salon de Beauté Valaze in London. As such, Rubinstein formed one of the world's first cosmetic companies. Her business enterprise proved immensely successful and later in life, she used her enormous wealth to support charitable institutions in the fields of education, art, and health.
Rubinstein rapidly expanded her operation. In 1908, her sister Ceska assumed the Melbourne shop's operation, and with $100,000, Rubinstein moved to London and began what was to become an international enterprise. (Women at this time could not obtain bank loans, so the money was her own.)
Marriage and children – London and Paris[edit]
In 1908, she married the Polish-born American journalist Edward William Titus in London. They had two sons, Roy Valentine Titus (London, December 12, 1909 – New York, June 18, 1989) and Horace Titus (London, April 23, 1912 – New York, May 18, 1958). They eventually moved to Paris where she opened a salon in 1912. Her husband helped with writing the publicity and set up a small publishing house, published Lady Chatterley's Lover and hired Samuel Putnam to translate famous model Alice Prin's (Kiki de Montparnasse) memoirs, Kiki's Memoirs.
Rubinstein threw lavish dinner parties and became known for apocryphal quips, such as when an intoxicated French ambassador expressed vitriol toward Edith Sitwell and her brother Sacheverell: Vos ancêtres ont brûlé Jeanne d'Arc! Rubinstein, who knew little French, asked a guest what the ambassador had said. "He said, 'Your ancestors burned Joan of Arc.' " Rubinstein replied, "Well, someone had to do it."[7]
At another fête, Marcel Proust asked her what makeup a duchess might wear. She summarily dismissed him because "he smelt of mothballs". Rubinstein recollected later, "How was I to know he was going to be famous?"[8]
Support for the arts[edit]
A one-off Rubinstein Mural Prize was awarded in 1958 to Erica McGilchrist for her work in the Women's College, University of Melbourne, and a Helena Rubinstein Scholarship was awarded to Frank Hodgkinson in 1958 and Charles Blackman 1960.
The Helena Rubinstein Portrait Prize was an annual prize of £300 for portraiture by an Australian artist, and was mostly staged at the Claude Hotchin Gallery in Western Australia.[33]
In popular culture[edit]
Based on Woodhead's book,[34] the 2016 musical War Paint dramatizes her rivalry with competitor Elizabeth Arden. After a run Chicago's Goodman Theatre, the show opened on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre on April 6, 2017, starring Patti LuPone as Rubinstein and Christine Ebersole as Arden.[35]
The comedy Lip Service by the Australian dramatist John Misto chronicles the life and career of Rubinstein and her rivalry with Elizabeth Arden and Revlon. Lip Service premiered April 26, 2017, at the Park Theatre in London, under the title Madame Rubinstein,[36] before opening at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre in August of the same year.
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