Scott-Vincent Borba, co-founder of e.l.f. Cosmetics, is giving up his beauty empire for a higher calling.
The former makeup mogul, 52, will soon be ordained as a Catholic priest in his California hometown by the Diocese of Fresno, marking a stark contrast from his past life in the world of cosmetics.
Borba spent decades creating a name for himself in the beauty industry and helping to launch the Oakland-based makeup brand, but he decided to give up his millions of dollars in 2019 and enter seminary after losing his sense of joy in his forties.
“I asked our Lord to help me be the man that he created me to be,” Borba told local ABC affiliate KGO. “And upon that instance, I had this massive flood of love and mercy that came into my life. It was a very mystical experience.”
The deacon and seminarian founded the cruelty-free cosmetics line, which stands for Eyes Lips Face, with Joseph Shamah in 2004. The brand, which acquired Hailey Bieber’s skincare and makeup brand rhode in a $1 billion deal last year, quickly became popular for its affordable prices and was sold in stores like Target, Walgreens and on the QVC Network.
Borba said about his formerly glamorous career: “We ran around with the likes of Paris Hilton, and partying with Kardashians and just doing up the Hollywood life. I was a poster boy for luxury living. I was not in any which way humble. I was very prideful.”
The exact amount of money that Borba gave away is not known, but he has said in the past that it was a “multimillion-dollar” fortune. He said that after he first felt convicted in 2019, he began to donate the money to charity — but it happened in stages.
“God called me to give up everything, and I thought that meant just my cars,” he told Catholic outlet OSV News. “So I had an Aston Martin convertible, and I said, ‘All right, Lord, I’m gonna sell this car, give the money to charity, and then use some other money to get myself a truck.’ Then he said, ‘Give it all up.’”
After he announced his plans to become a priest, he went to his first meeting with the diocese officials with a luxury suit and car, he later told OSV. He went on to formally resign from his business ventures in 2021.
Now, he lives a much more simplistic life at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, where he awaits his May 23 ceremony to be welcomed into the priesthood.
“I live in a little tiny room with..it’s sparse, nothing in it,” he said. “My life has been culled down to the bare minimum.”
He added: “I have never been happier in my life. Once I started to reorient myself, recalibrate myself with God’s help to the focus to Him, the joy started coming.”