ByCelia Shatzman,
Senior Contributor.
These days it seems like practically anyone can launch a beauty brand. But turning it into an international success is a very different story, and one that Anastasia Soare, the founder of Anastasia Beverly Hills (ABH), knows well. Soare risked her life to escape communist Romania and start over in the US, building her beloved billion-dollar beauty brand without any connections—all while raising a daughter on her own. Soare didn’t speak English when she arrived in Los Angeles, but learned it from watching "The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and in a full circle moment went on to shape Oprah’s eyebrows on the show years later.
Soare shares her story in her new book, Raising Brows: My Story of Building a Billion-Dollar Beauty Empire, along with the many lessons she learned along the way in the part memoir, part advice book. “The only reason why I wanted to write this book is to share with people and give them hope that they could do whatever they want,” Soare says. These eight lessons helped Soare become the mogul she is today.
When Soare arrived in the US, she didn’t have any money, connections or even fluency of the English language. But she saw being an immigrant as an advantage and considers herself the embodiment of the American dream. “When you come to this country as an immigrant, you want to take any opportunity to build something better than what you had in the country where you are coming from,” Soare says. “So, you start from nothing, you take jobs, and you build something that if I was born here and I was privileged, maybe I would not take any job. Everybody was a doctor or an engineer back home in an Eastern country from a communist regime, but when they came here they were willing to take any job possible, because they wanted to learn, to have an experience and to build their American dream, and it's up to you where you want to start and where you want to end.”
