page_title: Helena Rubinstein
section_title: Move to the United States
hierarchical_section_title: Helena Rubinstein / Move to the United States
caption_attribution_description: English: Helena Rubinstein cut the ribbon at the opening of an art gallery in her name at Tel Aviv Museum. January 1959
context_page_description: Helena Rubinstein was a Polish-American businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist. A cosmetics entrepreneur, and was the founder and eponym of Helena Rubinstein Incorporated cosmetics company, which made her one of the world's richest women.
context_section_description: At the outbreak of World War I, she and Titus moved to New York City, where she opened a cosmetics salon in 1915, the forerunner of a chain throughout the country. Helena opened up the boundless American market, and she skillfully used it, despite the serious competitors and the face of Elizabeth Arden and Charles Revson . This was the beginning of her vicious rivalry with another notable woman of the cosmetics industry, Elizabeth Arden. Both Rubinstein and Arden, who died within 18 months of each other, were social climbers. They were both keenly aware of effective marketing and luxurious packaging, the attraction of beauticians in neat uniforms, the value of celebrity endorsements, the perceived value of overpricing and the promotion of the pseudoscience of skincare. The rivalry with Arden lasted all her life, they were too similar and went towards the same goals the same way. Rubinstein said of her rival, "With her packaging and my product, we could have ruled the world." 
  From 1917, Rubinstein took on the manufacturing and wholesale distribution of her products. The "Day of Beauty" in the various salons became a great success. The purported portrait of Rubinstein in her advertising was of a middle-age mannequin with a Gentile appearance.
  In 1928, she sold the American business to Lehman Brothers for $7.3 million, ($88 million in 2007). After the arrival of the Great Depression, she bought back the nearly worthless stock for less than $1 million and eventually turned the shares into values of multimillion dollars, establishing salons and outlets in almost a dozen US cities. This saga, and Rubinstein's early business career, has been the subject of a recent Harvard Business School case. Her subsequent spa at 715 Fifth Avenue included a restaurant, a gymnasium and rugs by painter Joan Miró. She commissioned artist Salvador Dalí to design a powder compact as well a portrait of herself.
caption: Helena Rubinstein 1959 Tel Aviv Museum of Art
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