The biographer of cosmetics titan Mary Kay reveals how the other female inventors and entrepreneurs of her time were foiled and forgotten

By Mary Lisa Gavenas

Mary Kay Ash grew up during the Depression, married at 16, had her first two babies by the time she was 18, and somehow wound up as the first woman to chair a company on the New York Stock Exchange. It’s quite the story.

Whenever Mary Kay told it, she edited out the years between her first marriage and starting Mary Kay Cosmetics in 1963. In her autobiography and speeches to her saleswomen, she would occasionally hint at disappointments in her personal and professional life, but she was always short on specifics. To me, those years were a mystery to be solved. READ ON