During the 1920s the queens of the flourishing American, cosmetics industry were Helena Rubin-stein and stein and Elizabeth Arden. Although Rubinstein was a dark-complexioned Jew and Arden a fair-skinned Gentile, the two shared startling similarities. Both were short, buxom, brilliant, autocratic, and vain —formidable women who had, through vision and hard work, risen from rather humble beginnings to wealth and high so wealth and high social position. Both were foreign-born (Rubinstein in Poland, Arden in Canada), and both gained U.S. citizenship by marrying, at age thirty-seven. American men who helped promote their wives' businesses by working for them. These marriages ended in divorce, and both women then married impoverished Russian princes who seemed less attracted to their brides' charms than to their fortunes. Arden had no children, and Rubinstein proved indifferent mother to her two sons but both lavished affection on...