Maybelline

Maybelline is an American makeup brand sold worldwide and owned by the French cosmetics company L'Oréal.

In 1967, the company was sold by Williams to Plough, Inc. (now Schering-Plough) in Memphis, Tennessee. The entire cosmetic production facility was moved from Chicago to Memphis over one week-end. In 1975, the company moved its factory to Little Rock, Arkansas, where it is still located. In 1990, Schering-Plough sold Maybelline to a New York investment firm, Wasserstein Perella. Maybelline Operational Headquarters remained in Memphis until being sold in 1996, when headquarters moved to New York City. The makeup factory moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 2000.

The Maybelline Company was created by a 19 year old entrepreneur named Tom Lyle Williams in 1915. Williams, noticed his older sister Mabel, applying a mixture of Vaseline and coal dust to her eyelashes to give them a darker, fuller look. He adapted it with a chemistry set and produced a product sold locally called lash-in-brow-line . Williams renamed his eye beautifier Maybelline, in honor of his sister Mabel, who gave him the idea. In 1917 the company produced Maybelline Cake Mascara, "the first modern eye cosmetic for everyday use" and Ultra Lash in the 1960s, which was the first mass-market automatic.

In 1991, the company adopted its current advertising slogan, Maybe she's born with it. Maybe it's Maybelline. tagline. The company was acquired by L'Oréal in 1996. Acquiring Maybelline gave L'Oréal access to mass markets in cosmetics.