Mary Kay Ash Biography

Quick Facts

NAME: Mary Kay Ash
OCCUPATION: Entrepreneur
BIRTH DATE: May 12, 1918
DEATH DATE: November 22, 2001
PLACE OF BIRTH: Hot Wells, Texas
PLACE OF DEATH: Dallas, Texas

Best Known For

Entrepreneur Mary Kay, founder of Mary Kay Inc., built a profitable business from scratch that created new opportunities for women to achieve financial success.

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Mary Kay Ash

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Mary Kay Ash. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 11:36, May 24, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/mary-kay-ash-197044.

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Mary Kay Ash. [Internet]. 2013. The Biography Channel website. Available from: http://www.biography.com/people/mary-kay-ash-197044 [Accessed 24 May 2013].

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She seemed to sincerely value her consultants, and once said "People are a company's greatest asset."

Her approach to business attracted a lot of interest. She was admired for her strategies and the results they achieved. She wrote several books about her experiences, including Mary Kay: The Success Story of America's Most Dynamic Businesswoman (1981), Mary Kay on People Management (1984) and Mary Kay: You Can Have It All (1995).

Personal Life

While she stepped down from her position as CEO of the company in 1987, Ash remained an active part of the business. She established the Mary Kay Charitable Foundation in 1996. The foundation supports cancer research and efforts to end domestic violence. In 2000, she was named the most outstanding woman in business in the 20th century by Lifetime Television.

The cosmetics mogul died on November 22, 2001, in Dallas, Texas. By this time, the company she created had become a worldwide enterprise with representatives in more than 30 markets. She will be best remembered for building a profitable business from scratch that created new opportunities for women to achieve financial success.

Married three times, Ash had three children—Richard, Ben and Marylyn—by her first husband, J. Ben Rogers. The two divorced after Rogers returned from serving in World War II. Her second marriage to a chemist was brief; he died of a heart attack in 1963, just one month after the two had gotten married. She married her third husband, Mel Ash, in 1966, and the couple stayed together until Mel's death in 1980.