Donna Marcella Borghese
Italian princess and businesswoman (1911-2002)
Princess Marcella Borghese (15 February 1911 - 19 January 2002) was an Italian socialite, who was the wife of Paolo Borghese. She became a noted businesswoman, manufacturing her own line of cosmetics.
Early life
Marcella Fazi was born in Umbria, Italy in 1911. In 1937, she became the second wife of the widowed nobleman Paolo Borghese, Duke of Bomarzo and Prince of Sant’ Angelo e San Polo, and acquired the title of Princess.
The fashion-conscious princess had toiletries, including makeup, made specifically for her using the natural ingredients found around the Villa Borghese in Rome, where the family lived. She wanted to create a line of lipsticks in a wider variety of shades than what was available at the time, and once Pope Pius XII gave the cosmetics his blessing, pushed forward with the idea.
Cosmetics and skincare brands
In 1956, Borghese met cosmetics magnate, Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon. The two struck up a lifelong friendship, as he helped her to create her cosmetics line, which Revlon then licensed under the Princess Marcella Borghese brand name.
One of Princess Marcella Borghese's first collections included brightly colored lipsticks and nail colors to match the vivid colors of her fashion designer friend, Emilio Pucci's knitwear. Her Montecatini Cosmetic line, named after her favorite spa (and an ancient town in Tuscany), used the purported healing properties of the Terme di Montecatini mud and the mineral waters.
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This entry incorporates text from “Donna Marcella Borghese” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.