Born in Hot Wells, Harris County, Texas, Mary Kathlyn Wagner, famously known as Mary Kay Ash, is the daughter of Edward Alexander and Lula Vember Hastings Wagner. Her mother was a nurse and later became a manager of a restaurant in Houston. She founded Mary Kay Cosmetics, a direct-selling, multi-level marketing cosmetics company based in Addison, Texas.
Ash and her partners, which included her son, Richard, took the multi-level marketing company public in 1968. In 1985, the company decided to take the company’s privatization again after seventeen years as a public company. Ash remained active in Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc. until suffering a stroke in 1996. Richard Rogers was named CEO of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc. in 2001.
At Ash’s death, Mary Kay Cosmetics had over 800,000 representatives in 37 countries, with total annual sales of over $200 million. As of 2014, Mary Kay Cosmetics has over 3 billion consultants worldwide and a wholesale volume of over 3 billion. Ash married Ben Rogers at age 17. They had 3 children: Ben Jr., Marylin Reed, and Richard Rogers. While her husband served in World War II, she sold books door-to-door. She later married the brother of Mary C. Crowley, founder of Home Interiors and Gifts.
Mary Kathlyn Wagner went to work for Stanley Home Products. Frustrated when she was passed over for a promotion in favour of a man she had trained, Ash retired in 1963 and intended to write a book to assist women in business. The book turned into a business plan for her ideal company, and in the summer of 1963, Mary Kay Ash and her new husband, George Hollenbeck, planned to start Mary Kay Cosmetics.
However, life had its setbacks when George died of a heart attack on September 13, 1963, just one month before Mary Kay and George started Beauty by Mary Kay, as the company was then called. When she was 45 years old, with a $5,000 investment from her oldest son, Ben Rogers, Jr. and her young son, Richard Rogers, taking her late husband’s place, Ash started Mary Kay Cosmetics. The company started its original storefront operation, “Beauty By Mary Kay”, in Dallas.
They used a five‐hundred‐square‐foot storefront with nine saleswomen signed up. She copied the same “house party” model that Stanley, Tupperware, and others used. A Mary Kay representative would invite her friends for free facials and pitch the products. Profits rolled in, with double‐digit growth every year.
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