The beauty brand was Maybelline, founded in 1915 by pharmacist Thomas Lyle Williams.
Williams got the idea after seeing his older sister, Mabel, darken and thicken her eyelashes with a homemade mixture involving petroleum jelly and coal dust. He adapted the idea into a commercial eye cosmetic and named the company Maybelline, combining Mabel’s name with “Vaseline.”
The company’s earliest product was sold locally as Lash-Brow-Ine. In 1917, Williams introduced Maybelline Cake Mascara, a compact cake product applied with a wet brush. It helped make eye makeup more practical for everyday consumers and became an important step in the development of modern mascara.
The name is sometimes misspelled “Mabelline,” and the 1915 founding date can be confused with the 1917 launch of Maybelline Cake Mascara. Both dates belong to the brand’s early history, but Maybelline is the canonical answer to the question.