Mary Kay Ash

Mary Kay Ash, born Mary Kathlyn Wagner on May 12, 1918, in Hot Wells, Texas, grew up as the youngest of four children during economic hardship; her father contracted tuberculosis when she was two, leaving her mother to run a restaurant where Ash learned early work ethic by helping out. Married young to Ben Rogers, she sold children's books door-to-door during the Great Depression, then cookware with her husband, before joining Stanley Home Products in 1939 as a part-time salesperson, quickly becoming top seller using a 'house party' demonstration model. After her divorce, she worked at World Gift Company in the 1950s as national training director, but left in 1963 at age 45 after being passed over for promotion in favor of a man she had trained, prompting her to draft a business plan initially intended as a book for women in business. Determined to build a company without glass ceilings, Ash invested her $5,000 life savings—supplemented by her son—to launch Mary Kay Cosmetics on September 13, 1963, in a 500-square-foot Dallas storefront with nine salespeople recruited from friends. Her second husband, George Hallenbeck, was set to handle finances but died of a heart attack a month before opening; her son Richard Rogers stepped in instead, against advice from lawyers and accountants urging her to quit. Adopting the party-plan sales model from Stanley and Tupperware, representatives hosted free facials to demo skin care products in pink packaging, achieving double-digit annual growth from the start.