A sweeping biography of one of the most influential (and successful) business-woman in American history, Becoming Elizabeth Arden opens the Red Door to a world of wealth, glamor, and the profitable business of beauty.

When she died in 1966, Elizabeth Arden was a household name on six continents and a millionaire several times over. She counted British royalty and social elites from the overlapping worlds of New York, Hollywood, London, and Paris among her friends. Arden had revolutionized women’s relationship with both skin care and cosmetics, making it acceptable for all women to embrace glamor and wear makeup—not just actresses and prostitutes. She had created a phenomenally successful international business empire before women had gained the vote, and when virtually no woman owned or ran her own national company. She had done it on her own, and she had done it for a very unladylike to get rich, and to give women everywhere access to beauty.

Acclaimed biographer Stacy Cordery does full justice to a woman whose life was even more indelible than her name brand, the embodiment of sophistication, refinement, and style, in an archetypal rags-to-riches story. Florence Nightingale Graham, a Canadian immigrant, was born with a shrewd sense of the possible, and with hard work and perseverance, she made makeup (along with fitness and style) not only acceptable but de rigeur. Cordery gives us a persuasive picture of a modern Arden did not merely spot trends, she created them; she thrived throughout the Depression, reimagined her needs (and women’s) during two World Wars, set new paths in marketing and advertising, and ushered beauty in the modern era–a model for aspiring businesses to this day.

Stacy A. Cordery, Ph.D., is the author of Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker, Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts, and two books about Theodore Roosevelt. Cordery is a professor of History at Iowa State University in Ames.

Credit: Craig Carroll Photography