Florence Nightingale Graham (December 31, 1878 – October 19, 1966), who went by the business name Elizabeth Arden, was a Canadian businesswoman who built a cosmetics empire in the United States.
Arden was born in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada, where she lived until the age of 24. In 1909, she dropped out of nursing school in Toronto.
She then joined her elder brother in New York City, working briefly as a bookkeeper for the E.R. Squibb Pharmaceutic...
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Florence Nightingale Graham (December 31, 1878 – October 19, 1966), who went by the business name Elizabeth Arden, was a Canadian businesswoman who built a cosmetics empire in the United States.
Arden was born in Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada, where she lived until the age of 24. In 1909, she dropped out of nursing school in Toronto.
She then joined her elder brother in New York City, working briefly as a bookkeeper for the E.R. Squibb Pharmaceuticals Company. While there, Arden spent hours in their lab, learning about skincare. She then worked - again briefly - for Eleanor Adair, an early beauty culturist, as a "treatment girl".
In 1909 Arden formed a partnership with Elizabeth Hubbard, another culturist. When the partnership dissolved, she coined the business name "Elizabeth Arden" from her former partner and from Tennyson's poem "Enoch Arden".
In 1912 Arden travelled to France to learn beauty and facial massage techniques used in the Paris beauty salons. She returned with a...
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