As a nanny for English nobles, she learns how to become a lady. In their library she studies botany and learns from Homer that beauty comes from within. The word “wellness” has not yet been invented, but the idea is already germinating that you have to sell an attitude to life …. And it sells brilliantly with the self-confident, sun-tanned Australians who admire the silky white complexion of the young, charismatic European.
With the help of investors, Rubinstein founded her first beauty salon in Melbourne in 1902. “Valaze Maison de Beauté” sells creams, massage oils and detailed discussions about the lifestyle of its customers. Rubinstein, who pretends to be a doctor of medicine, attaches great importance to the scientific atmosphere. Laboratory, white coat and well-groomed conversation become trademarks. She invents what will become the biggest PR coup in the cosmetics industry: the scientification of beauty.
In her early thirties she had already made a small fortune. In private, however, everything stays the same. Until Helena Rubinstein, in her mid-thirties, breaks the resolution never to marry: A young journalist, also Polish, Edward Titus becomes her husband and father of her two sons. It was through him that Rubinstein made first contacts in the art world: in London, where she opened another salon in 1910, she met Virginia Woolf, and Romancière Colette became a regular customer in her Parisian salon.
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