'I've always loved make-up,' says Bobbi Brown. 'I still remember being a child and watching my mother apply make-up. With her white eyeshadow and black liner, I thought she was so glamorous.'
These days, Brown is the one making women look glamorous. Now at the age of 50 and with a family of her own, Brown is not only an accomplished make-up artist, but also the author of four books and chief executive of her cosmetics company, Bobbi Brown Essentials.
Despite the thrill Brown experienced when playing with make-up while growing up, it wasn't until her late teens that she realised it was something she was serious about as a career. After graduating from Emerson College in Boston with a degree in theatrical make-up, Brown moved to New York City to pursue her dream of becoming a professional make-up artist.
'From the start of my career I believed make-up was a way to help women look and feel like themselves, only prettier and more confident,' says Brown. It's this philosophy - that women shouldn't use make-up to hide their flaws but to accentuate their attributes - that made the launch of her line such a success.
A quick glance at a Bobbi Brown cosmetics counter will find only natural-looking shades that work particularly well on dark brown to light olive skin tones. 'At the height of my freelance career I got the idea to create a lipstick unlike anything else that was on the market.
I wanted something that looked like lips, only better. Working with a chemist I came up with a pinky-brown shade of lipstick that I called Brown. I realised that not all women like neutrals, so I came up with nine other shades that I thought would look good on women I knew.
