Michelle Phan is an American makeup artist, entrepreneur, and voice actress who became notable as a YouTuber. Phan is a pioneering Beauty YouTuber who has over 8.9 million subscribers and over 1.1 billion lifetime views. She is also the founder and owner of EM Cosmetics.

Phan was born on April 11, 1987, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents are both of Vietnamese origin and she has an older brother and younger half sister. According to Phan, her biological father left the family when she was young and her mother remarried but left Phan’s stepfather after years of abuse. Her mother, brother, half sister, and herself moved to Tampa, Florida where she attended Tampa Bay Technical High School.

After graduating high school, Phan attended Ringling College of Art and Design but dropped out due to financial issues and in 2014, Phan received her Honorary Doctorate of Arts degree from Ringling.

In 2005, Phan had a personal blog where she discussed different makeup tutorials and began receiving requests for further instruction, this is when she began to post tutorial vlogs on Xanga under the username Ricebunny and later began publishing on YouTube in 2007.

Buzzfeed helped to launch Phan’s channel after featuring two of her “Hot to get Lady Gaga’s Eyes” makeup tutorials in 2009 and 2010. This helped her videos go viral and brought her over a million subscribers. In 2010, Lancôme made Ohan their official video makeup artist after she featured some of their products in her videos, making her the company’s first Vietnamese spokesperson.

Then in 2011, Phan co-founded MyGlam, a monthly beauty product subscription which has since been renamed Ipsy, and launched in 2012. Ipsy is a sponsor of the Generation Beauty conference and Phan became a YouTube advertising partner and launched FAWN, a YouTube multichannel network in 2012.

August 15, 2013, L’Oreal launched a new cosmetics line called EM Cosmetics by Michelle Phan. Dedicating this brand to her mother, and in April of 2015, Phan bought L’Oreal’s shares of EM Cosmetics through Ipsy and confirmed on her Instagram in 2016. It was also during this time that Phan had resigned from Ipsy in order to focus on EM Cosmetics.

In 2015 Phan was named to be Inc. 30 under 30 and Forbes 30 under 30 lists. The same year, she raised $100 million to value the company Ipsy at over $500 million.

And in 2018, Phan found the start-up Thematic, a company specializing in licensing music.
Phan has had a busy schedule in her career right after high school and continues to grow her platform with her numerous amount of businesses and affiliations.