Which entrepreneur founded Elizabeth Arden, Inc. in 1910?

Elizabeth Arden founded the company that became Elizabeth Arden, Inc. in 1910.

Born Florence Nightingale Graham in Canada, Arden moved to New York and developed an interest in skincare while working around the E. R. Squibb laboratory and in beauty salons. In 1909, she briefly partnered with Elizabeth Hubbard. After that partnership dissolved, Graham opened a salon on New York’s Fifth Avenue in 1910.

The business originally operated as the Red Door salon. Graham adopted the professional name Elizabeth Arden by combining Elizabeth, retained from her former partnership, with Arden, a name inspired by a nearby farm. The salon’s red entrance became one of the beauty industry’s most recognizable symbols.

Arden helped make cosmetics more socially acceptable in the early twentieth century. She promoted coordinated skincare and makeup, introduced scientific ideas into product development, and expanded internationally. She is sometimes confused with Estée Lauder or Helena Rubinstein, but those were separate beauty entrepreneurs and competing contemporaries.