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View information about Maybelline. You can view the history of Maybelline.

Maybelline

• Name: Maybelline
• Field: Cosmetics
• Founded: 1915

The story of Maybelline:

Believe it or not, this iconic brand got its start from a guy who watched his sister putting on eye makeup. Founder Tom Lyle Williams…

…was a 19-year-old in 1915 when he saw his sister Mabel…

…putting a concoction of coal dust and Vaseline on her eyelashes to make them appear fuller and darker. Tom used the idea and made a product with his chemistry set and started selling it as lash-in-brow. He later renamed it in honor of the sibling who gave him his huge idea, calling it Maybelline! Within two years he introduced Maybelline Cake Mascara and Ultra Lash in the 1960's.

Maybelline ads were everywhere in the mass media, from print…

…to the early days of TV…

…right up until today.

The company was sold by Williams…

…in 1967 and he died in 1976.

Maybelline is now a subsidiary of the French cosmetics firm L'Oréal, which acquired it in 1996. There was some criticism that Maybelline tested it products on animals but L'Oréal says on its websites it no longer runs animal testing.