i know, exactly! does it feel like home now, california? 0h. you know, i. because i ve emigrated to several different countries i was born in scotland i feel everywhere is home, and nowhere is. and now. yeah, yeah, of course. now, yourfirst store. our very first flagship for dermalogica. and this was where we really it became like an open kitchen, open seven days a week, open all day, lots of revolutionary things in our industry that we did. no one booked by their name, we booked by the room. we redesigned what a treatment room looks like. so, this became the showcase for the brand. let s go have a look. yeah! let s come on in. i can t wait to show it to you. you ve been an amazingly successful businesswoman. thank you. i mean, you ve built this incredible empire, and you built it from nothing. i want to go back in time a little bit, because i remember the first time we met, it was at a book event. yeah. and you came up to me, and you said that you were the founder of
now on bbc news, influential with katty kay: jane wurwand. jane wurwand is the founder of dermalogica, and i ve wanted to interview herfor a long time because she has a fascinating story about leaving beauty school in england at the age of 16, coming to america, and founding what became one of the biggest brands in skincare in the world. so nice to see you! laughs thank you for having me. oh, my gosh. and you brought out the very rare, lovely sunny california weather. i know exactly! does it feel like home now, california? 0h. you know, i. because i ve emigrated to several different countries i was born in scotland i feel everywhere is home and nowhere is. and now. yeah, yeah, of course. now, yourfirst store. our very first flagship for dermalogica. and this was where we really it became like an open kitchen, open seven days a week, open all day. lots of revolutionary things in our industry that we did. no one booked by their name, we booked by the room. we redesigned
thinking but i definitely was thinking it was more of an experiment. you know, i had an idea to start a blog. actually, my sisters really pushed me especially my sister mona. she was like, you know, you need to be out there. you know so much about beauty. share it with the world. you re so passionate about it. and then, you know, one thing led to another, we started a beauty brand. and, no, never in my wildest dreams did i think we would be here ten years later. but i want to take you back to even before starting huda beauty, before becoming a make up artist even. so you were a child, you grew up in tennessee in the states, and your family had moved from iraq to the us. that s right. so, to a different cultural scene and to a place where not many people looked like you. yeah. what was life like? it was tough. i especially think at that time, i really struggled with my identity. i definitely struggled you know, i know it s we have a beauty brand now and we speak so
So i feel very, i love being onstage. I love being in a live environment. I havent been onstage, actually, for a couple of years now, five years, probably. But im looking forward to going back and doing some more because it is, its live and you have a control over the performance, which you dont on screen. Is it true, that thing people always say about how you feel the audience when youre onstage . You can feel whether theyre paying attention or slightly looking at their watches, thinking, am i going to make the last train home . Yeah. You can . Totally. The last play i did was a beautiful play by Bill Nicholson called shadowlands, which is a movie with debra winger and tony hopkins about cs lewis and his late flowering love. And its shot through with great wit and humour about this very closed off man who finds love late in life, and then she dies. And its really a story about the question that he asks at the beginning of the play is, if god is love, why does he allow suffering . And