It’s easy to assume that billion-dollar beauty brands are built by insiders, people with money, connections, and influence. But every so often, someone walks into an industry with none of those things and still changes it forever. That’s the story of Anastasia Soare, the Romanian immigrant who arrived in Los Angeles with barely any English, almost no money, and a skill no one thought mattered: eyebrow shaping.

Today she’s widely known as The Brow Queen, and her brand, Anastasia Beverly Hills, is valued in the billions. But her journey wasn’t a smooth ascent, it was a story of grit, creativity, and the confidence to pursue an idea long before anyone understood it. And if you’ve ever filled in your brows with a pencil, gel, pomade, or anything in between, you’re benefiting from a cultural shift she started.

From Communist Romania to the Heart of Beverly Hills

Anastasia’s story begins in Constanța, Romania, where she studied art history and architecture, two disciplines that would unexpectedly shape her beauty career years later. She has recalled that even as a child, she dreamed of coming to America, believing it was the only place she’d be able to fully express herself.

She arrived in Los Angeles in 1989 with her young daughter, Claudia, after securing a rare visa that allowed her to leave Romania during the final years of the communist regime. She didn’t speak much English, didn’t have savings, and didn’t have a predefined plan. But she did know how to work. She took jobs as an aesthetician,  partly because she didn’t need perfect English, and started paying attention to what clients cared about.

That’s when she noticed something strange: nobody was paying attention to eyebrows. Not salons. Not makeup artists. Not even clients themselves.

In her interviews with Harper’s Bazaar, she reflected on those early days:

“In every picture I had from Romania, I looked very surprised because my eyebrows were so thin and round.”

That observation was more than a personal detail. It was the seed of a billion-dollar idea.

Finding the Gap No One Else Saw

Most people would have ignored the eyebrow problem. Anastasia didn’t. Her art and architecture training kicked in, particularly the Golden Ratio, a mathematical principle used for centuries in painting, sculpture, and design. The Golden Ratio is all about balance and harmony. Anastasia began wondering:

If artists use the Golden Ratio to draw perfect faces, why couldn’t it also be used to shape real eyebrows? She was fascinated by how subtle changes in angles, arches, and proportions could completely transform a person’s expression. In her own words:

“By applying the Golden Ratio in my approach, I aimed to merge the science of proportion with the art of beauty.”

Armed with this insight, and nothing else, she convinced a small Beverly Hills salon to let her rent a room where she could specialize in brows. It was an unglamorous beginning: a tiny room, a skill nobody respected, and a new immigrant trying to make rent.

But her belief in the craft never wavered.

Hollywood Discovers the Brow Artist Who Changed Everything

This is the part of the story that feels almost cinematic.

Anastasia began shaping brows for a handful of salon walk-ins. But something happened: each person walked out looking dramatically different, more balanced, more lifted, more expressive. The results spoke louder than any business card or marketing campaign.

The first celebrity to sit in her chair? Cindy Crawford. But in classic immigrant-hustler fashion, Anastasia later admitted:

“I swear, I didn’t even know who she was. But she was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

After Cindy came Naomi Campbell. Then Claudia Schiffer. Then Jennifer Lopez. Then Oprah. By this point, Anastasia was not just shaping brows, she was building a reputation.

She recalls thinking: “Maybe I should focus on eyebrows, because it’s a walking advertisement.” When the entire supermodel era is walking around with your work on their face, that instinct is correct.

Scaling a Skill Into a Product Line

By the late 1990s, her brow studio had become a beauty destination, but there was still a ceiling. She could only shape so many brows a day, and people around the world wanted results they could achieve at home.

In 2000, Anastasia launched Anastasia Beverly Hills, a brow-focused cosmetics line inspired by her Golden Ratio method. At a time when lips and skin dominated the beauty market, building a brand around eyebrows was considered bizarre.

But again, Anastasia was early, and right. Her products, especially Brow Wiz and Dipbrow Pomade, became instant hits because they recreated her studio results without needing to book an appointment. Industry observers later described ABH as the brand that literally “invented the eyebrow category”, a claim that isn’t an exaggeration.

She went from being a one-woman service provider to a founder building a full-scale global beauty company.

Winning the Social Media Era Before Everyone Else

If Anastasia Soare was early to the brow revolution, her daughter Claudia was early to the digital one. Long before legacy beauty companies recognized the power of Instagram, Anastasia Beverly Hills was posting tutorials, brow transformations, and reposting customer looks. The brand built one of the strongest beauty communities online, and TikTok and YouTube only amplified that influence.

ABH became synonymous with the Instagram Brow, and products routinely sold out within hours of dropping. The brand also dominated the early beauty-influencer world, collaborating with makeup artists before influencer marketing was even considered an industry.

It wasn’t luck. It was agility. And it turned ABH into a billion-dollar empire.

The Billion-Dollar Brow Empire and the Legacy Behind It

By the late 2010s, Anastasia Beverly Hills had expanded into a full color cosmetics line, stocked globally, and embraced by celebrities, professional makeup artists, and everyday consumers. Her memoir, Raising Brows, released in 2025, reflects on the journey and the mindset that made it possible.

She writes:

“People think they need this master plan. You just need to start, and you will figure it out slowly, you’ll learn, you’ll grow.”

What started as a small rented room became a global brand used in nearly every makeup tutorial online. What began as an overlooked service became a beauty category worth billions.

Why Anastasia’s Story Matters

Anastasia Soare represents a rare kind of entrepreneur, the kind who doesn’t just create products but creates an entire market. She saw value in something everyone else dismissed. She pushed through skepticism, language barriers, and financial strain. She trusted her eye, her experience, and her customers. And she became a global category-defining founder.

Her story is a reminder that sometimes the most transformative ideas start in the smallest places, in a skill someone overlooks, in an industry gap no one pays attention to, or in the hands of a person who simply refuses to give up.

Here Are Five Entrepreneurial Lessons From Anastasia Beverly Hills’ Rise

1. The smallest overlooked niche can become a billion-dollar category

Anastasia didn’t chase the crowded parts of the beauty industry. Instead, she focused on eyebrows, the least respected, most ignored part of the face at the time. By identifying a gap no one else cared about, she created a whole new category instead of competing in an existing one.

Lesson: Don’t always look for the biggest market. Look for the ignored one where you can redefine the rules.

2. Mastery and craft are competitive advantages money cannot buy

Before building a global brand, Anastasia spent years perfecting a technique rooted in the Golden Ratio. Her deep understanding of symmetry, facial structure, and aesthetics gave her something rare: a skill that couldn’t be easily copied.

Lesson: Develop craftsmanship so strong that it becomes your moat. Expertise scales when paired with the right business model.

3. Word-of-mouth is more powerful when your work speaks louder than marketing

Anastasia didn’t gain celebrity clients because she chased fame. She gained them because people saw the difference her work made. Supermodels, actresses, and executives came to her because each transformation was a walking advertisement.

Lesson: An exceptional product or service eliminates the need for aggressive persuasion. Make the quality so clear that people become your ambassadors.

4. Reinvention is essential, not optional

When her studio reached capacity, Anastasia could have comfortably stayed a high-end service provider. Instead, she reinvented her model by launching products long before brows were trending. Later, her daughter helped reinvent again by embracing social media early.

Lesson: If you don’t evolve, your business will hit a ceiling. Reinvention is the bridge between expertise and scale.

5. Perseverance is a strategy, not a personality trait

Anastasia arrived in the U.S. with limited English, limited funds, and no network, yet she built her career brick by brick. She once said, “You don’t need a master plan. Start, and you will figure it out slowly.” Her story shows that clarity comes through action, not perfection.

Lesson: You don’t need perfect conditions to start. Persistence creates momentum, and momentum creates clarity.

‍

Read - The Genius Marketing Strategy of Michelin: How a Tire Company Became a Global Cultural Authority

‍