Benefit Cosmetics
Benefit Cosmetics LLC is a cosmetics maker based in San Francisco and part of the luxury group LVMH. It was started in 1976 by twin sisters Jean and Jane Ford from Indiana. They opened a beauty shop called The Face Place in San Francisco’s Mission District, later moving to downtown. In 1989 they created a product catalog and, in 1990, renamed the business Benefit Cosmetics as they began selling through department stores.
The first U.S. department store sale happened in 1991 at Henri Bendel in New York. In 1997 Benefit expanded internationally with Harrods in London, and around that time the company launched its website. LVMH bought Benefit on September 14, 1999.
In 2001, Benefit launched Bathina, its bath-and-boudoir line. The Brow Bar, a shop area for brow shaping, opened in Macy’s Union Square in San Francisco in 2003. In 2012 Benefit earned a Guinness World Record for performing 382 eyebrow waxes in eight hours, a record they broke in 2017 with 435 waxes in Melbourne.
In 2022, Marks & Spencer partnered with Benefit to offer more than 200 products online and in five UK stores: Camberley, Cheshire Oaks, Handforth Dean, Hedge End, and Lisburn. In 2023, Yasmin Benoit became the first asexual person to appear in a Benefit campaign, along with Anick Soni.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:38 (CET).