How did you fall into beauty?
By accident! I was “supposed” to be an art dealer, but I loved makeup and I had a lot of friends who loved it, too. The success I saw with the fragrance I created with Diane was the start of it, and then beauty opportunities just kept coming.

How did you come up with the concept for Chantecaille?
Chantecaille first started as a niche French fragrance house with four original scents based on natural essential oils. Within a year and a half, I realized that my passion for high quality skincare, natural products, Chinese medicine and aromatherapy were begging to be expanded into a line of beauty. This is really how it all began, from my desire to make high-quality products that not only made women feel beautiful but were also healthy for them.

How have you changed the landscape when it comes to natural beauty products?
At the time Chantecaille launched, we were probably the first company to base all of our products on flowers—I’m obsessed with the power of botanicals. No one was working on products backed by science and botanical ingredients at the time. We never used artificial fragrances, nor the usual harmful chemicals used at the time as emulsifiers or preservatives. We had the purest products on the market at a time when most people were not even thinking about the ingredients in their skincare. We never actually talked that much about the decision to use natural ingredients, we just did it, knowing that people would eventually figure out that these new products felt better on their skin. They smell so fresh, and it was clearly so different from anything else on the market.

It’s the same story for Chantecaille foundations like Future Skin. They make the skin look alive and natural, imperceptibly perfected. The formulas were radically new, utilizing pigments that had just been created in Japan. I have always been obsessed with skin and had a deep knowledge of formulating foundation from my time at Prescriptives, so I created the next generation of makeup which today is still unsurpassed on the market.

What’s the best compliment you ever received?
Women saying things like, “where have you been all my life? Now that I have your products, I’ll never change!” And another beautiful client telling me that she felt safe using our products during chemotherapy treatments and how our Gold Cream got her skin through it.

What was your “aha moment” when you realized Chantecaille had really become a success?
When Angelina Jolie applied our Brilliant Gloss on the air at the Golden Globes—that was huge. She also chose to use all of our products a few years ago on the cover of Vanity Fair, and then continued to order tons of colors for the movie she was shooting in Venice.

I am also incredibly proud that Chantecaille is the number one brand at Bergdorf Goodman, a trendsetting beauty mecca for women in New York and all around the world.

I can’t live without our Pure Rosewater – I won’t fly without the travel size bottle, it’s the first thing I reach for in the morning and the last thing I treat my face with at bedtime. Ours is the only rosewater that is made from 100% of the very rare Rose de Mai—the extract from 1,000 petals is in every bottle. I also never board a plane without our Gold Energizing Eye Recovery Mask, which has highly concentrated forms of line-smoothing and de-puffing stem cells that repair and restore the eyes while on the plane. Right now I’m also using our Blanc Gardenia Brightening Essence—it’s the perfect antidote to my guilty pleasure of lying in the sun! I also love to use our Bio Lifting Cream at bedtime to repair my skin overnight.

What product from the line is your favorite right now?
It’s hard to pick just one! For skincare, I am religiously using our Blue Light Protection Hyaluronic Serum. I am very concerned with the negative effects of blue light pollution. Our skin is silently, secretly being damaged. Everyone is constantly on their phone and spending hours in front of their screens. We worked on the formula for our Blue Light Protection Hyaluronic Serum for a long time. In the development stages, studies came out that showed some forms of brown spots may be caused by overexposure to blue light. Luckily, Fermented Extract and the Nasturtium Flower Extract are proven to reduce the visible effects of aging caused by blue light in your skin. Fermented Extract is a particularly fascinating ingredient — it is derived from a radiation-resistant microorganism found in a waterfall in the Spanish Pyrenees. When water accumulates in rocky crags formed by erosion, it forces these microorganisms to adapt to the magnified light radiation that hits them. In our serum, Fermented Extract helps skin adapt to visible light, minimizing the appearance of brown spots and wrinkles.

I also love our new Radiance Elixir. It lights your skin from within for a very natural glow. You see a difference in your skin right away—a natural radiance, less redness, and a smooth, firm complexion. You look awake immediately—it's boosted with a Skin Awakening Complex that invigorates the skin and boosts its barrier lipid. But Radiance Elixir also offers long-term skincare benefits and revives the complexion with these amazing Crystal Peptides that naturally exfoliate the skin, clarify, and impart a subtle rosy glow.