The Story of Elizabeth Arden & Helena Rubinstein

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The Story of Elizabeth Arden & Helena Rubinstein

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Last Updated (Thursday, 18 March 2010 20:18)

Powder and Glory DVD PBS stations will rebroadcast The Powder & The Glory this month for Women's History Month. The Powder & The Glory tells the story of two of the first highly successful women entrepreneurs in America, Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein. One hundred years ago these women immigrated to the United States and, starting with next to nothing, created what is today the $150 billion global health and beauty industry. Read the film's description and find out why YOU should see this film.

Although they lived and worked only blocks apart in New York for over 50 years, the two women, by design, never met! Their competition drove them both to great creativity and success.

Their competing companies defined the business of beauty, making cosmetics both newly respectable and, finally, indispensable. Along the way they developed many advertising and marketing techniques that became part of the business landscape, and they themselves became household names, cultural icons, and two of the world's wealthiest women.

They both influenced and were influenced by the major movements of the day in art, style, and women's roles:

•When the close-up became a staple in the movies, makeup became au courant
•Their salons were showcases of modernist design
•They helped usher in the "new woman" of the 1920s--young, independent, and in every way equal to men
•Throughout their careers, they supported women's empowerment and rights

Their accomplishments continue to be relevant to both women and men in business today. This is an inspiring story about perseverance, genuine creativity, and continual reinvention to meet the changing needs and demands of consumers and society. When they started their businesses, makeup was used mostly by prostitutes and performers, and businesses were run mostly by men. They changed all of that and created a whole new industry.

Elizabeth Arden

Elizabeth Arden was born Florence Nightingale Graham and raised in poverty on a farm in rural Ontario. She came to New York in 1907, and began work as a clerk in a beauty shop. By 1910 she had reinvented herself as Elizabeth Arden and opened her own salon. In 1912 she joined a women's suffrage march on Fifth Avenue, and said "Every woman has a right to be beautiful."

Helena Rubinstein was born Chaya Rubinstein in Krakow, Poland. As a young woman, she fled to Australia where, in 1906, she opened a shop and began selling pots of face cream. In 1914, having already opened salons in London and Paris, she arrived in New York and began a lifelong competition with Elizabeth Arden. She said: "All the American women had purple noses and gray lips and their faces were chalk white from terrible powder. I recognized that the United States could be my life's work."