The History of Color Cosmetics: From Ancient Kohl to Modern Makeup

In 2010, fifty-two ancient Egyptian cosmetic samples held in the Louvre were placed under synchrotron spectroscopy and electron microscopy. The research team led by Philippe Walter of France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) confirmed a remarkable finding: the kohl that Egyptians applied around their eyes contained lead compounds — laurionite and phosgenite — that do not occur naturally in the Nile region.^[1] These were not mined but synthesized. They were chemical substances deliberately produced by combining lead oxide, rock salt, natron, and water.^[1] Why did the Egyptians go beyond simply decorating their eyes to essentially running a chemistry laboratory?

When follow-up studies examined the effects of these lead compounds on human cells, the results were unexpected. Trace amounts of lead ions triggered nitric oxide production in skin cells (keratinocytes), activating an immune response that helped prevent eye infections.^[2] The Ebers Papyrus, written around 1550 BCE, also recorded these ingredients as treatments for ophthalmic diseases.^[2] The history of color cosmetics is commonly framed as beginning with the “pursuit of beauty,” but the oldest archaeological evidence points in the opposite direction. Cosmetics likely began as medicine, and decoration was merely a byproduct.

Eyes, Lips, and Skin: Color Cosmetics in Ancient Civilizations

Egyptian Kohl and Beyond

In ancient Egypt, kohl was an essential item used by everyone regardless of gender or age. Black kohl, made primarily from galena (lead sulfide), was applied around the eyes, while crushed malachite served as a green pigment for the eyelids.^[3] When the Louvre research team analyzed 87 kohl samples, 85 were found to contain lead-based minerals as their primary ingredient.^[1] However, a follow-up study published in 2022 revealed that kohl composition was far more varied than previously thought. Numerous samples were found to contain plant-based and animal-derived organic components as major constituents, suggesting that kohl was not a single product but was manufactured using different recipes depending on its intended use.^[3]

Mesopotamian Lips and Greek Stigma

The origins of lip coloring trace back to Mesopotamia. Around 3500 BCE, artifacts excavated from Sumerian royal tombs included red pigments stored in seashells.^[4] The tomb of Queen Puabi (ca. 2550 BCE), discovered in the Royal Cemetery of Ur, contained an elaborate set of cosmetic tools among its grave goods.^[5] Crushed hematite mixed with white lead was applied to the lips — the earliest known form of lipstick.^[4]

What is particularly intriguing is that red lip coloring carried an entirely different meaning in ancient Greece than in Egypt or Mesopotamia. In Athens, red lips were considered a marker of sex workers, and appearing in public wearing such coloring could result in punishment for “impersonating a respectable woman.”^[4] In contrast, the Minoan civilization on Crete used it freely without such restrictions, even applying Tyrian purple extracted from shellfish to the lips.^[4] The fact that the same act could be either adornment or stigma depending on the culture demonstrates that cosmetics were inseparable from social codes from the very beginning.

Roman Skin Color Manipulation

In Rome, cosmetics that altered skin tone were widely practiced. Chalk (creta) or white lead (cerussa) was applied to the face to whiten the skin, while cinnabar or red lead (minium) was dabbed on the cheeks to add a rosy flush.^[6] In his first-century work Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love), Ovid described women’s cosmetic techniques in detail, while also warning that excessive makeup could backfire.^[6] But the biggest problem with cosmetics of this era was not their aesthetic effect — it was their toxicity. Both white lead and cinnabar were heavy metal compounds, and prolonged use caused lead poisoning and mercury poisoning.

Deadly Beauty: Lead, Mercury, and Belladonna

The darkest chapter in the history of color cosmetics is the era of toxic cosmetics. This problem, which began in antiquity, reached its peak during the Renaissance and the Elizabethan period.

The most popular cosmetic in 16th-century Europe was “Venetian ceruse.” Also known as “Spirits of Saturn,” this white powder was made by mixing white lead (lead carbonate) with vinegar, and the Venetian variety was considered the finest quality.^[7] It created a smooth, opaque white film on the skin that met the beauty standard of the time — flawless white skin. But the price of this beautiful whiteness was severe. Lead absorbed through the skin caused skin discoloration, hair loss, muscle paralysis, and ultimately death.^[7]

Elizabeth I (1533–1603) is frequently cited as the most famous user of ceruse. According to the conventional narrative, she began applying ceruse thickly to conceal smallpox scars after contracting the disease at age 29, rubbed mercury on her lips, and used belladonna (a nightshade plant) eye drops to dilate her pupils and make her eyes appear larger.^[8] Some have even claimed that the cumulative toxicity of these chemicals contributed to her death.^[8]

However, this narrative has faced scholarly pushback. Historians such as Anna Riehl and Kate Maltby have pointed out that contemporary primary sources confirming Elizabeth actually used ceruse are extremely scarce.^[8] The image of “a queen poisoned by her own makeup” may be largely a later embellishment. What is certain is that ceruse itself was widely used during this period and that the resulting health damage was very real. Maria Gunning (Countess of Coventry), an 18th-century Irish socialite, died at the age of 27, and chronic lead poisoning from cosmetics is widely suspected as the cause.^[9]

Belladonna (Atropa belladonna) illustrates another dimension of danger. The plant’s very name, meaning “beautiful lady” in Italian, derives from its cosmetic use. When the extract was applied as eye drops, it dilated the pupils, making the eyes appear larger and more alluring — but overuse caused vision damage and blindness.^[10] These cases share a common paradox: the “effect” and the “harm” of the cosmetic originated from the same chemical mechanism. The same chemical reaction that made lead smooth the skin was also the one that destroyed it.

The Birth of the Modern Cosmetics Industry: Immigrants, Women, and Hollywood

The birth of the modern cosmetics industry was concentrated in the early 20th century, and the profiles of its pioneers are striking. The vast majority of those who built the industry were immigrants or members of marginalized groups.

Max Factor (1877–1938) was a Jewish immigrant from Lodz (Łódź), Poland. After working as a court cosmetician in the Russian Empire, he emigrated to the United States in 1904 and established his company in Los Angeles in 1909.^[11] The early film industry’s problem was that stage makeup looked unnatural on camera. Conventional theatrical greasepaint cracked and appeared patchy on film. Factor developed “Flexible Greasepaint” in 1914 to solve this problem, and later invented Pan-Cake Make-Up in 1928.^[11] Crucially, these products created for Hollywood soon spread to the general consumer market. Factor is credited with popularizing the very term “make-up.”^[11]

Helena Rubinstein (1872–1965) was also a Jewish woman from Poland who rejected an arranged marriage and emigrated to Australia in 1896.^[12] With almost no English and no capital, she opened a beauty salon in Melbourne and grew her business enough within five years to fund an expansion to London. In 1915, she opened a cosmetics salon in New York, which became the starting point of a nationwide chain.^[12] Rubinstein was a pioneer in applying scientific methods to cosmetics and was the first to commercialize the concept of categorizing products by skin type.

During the same period, Elizabeth Arden (1878–1966) emerged as a rival, and the fierce competition between the two women drove the industry for decades.^[12] These three figures — Factor, Rubinstein, and Arden — are credited with transforming cosmetics from a cottage industry into a global mass market.

The Social History of Lipstick: A Tool of Resistance and Mobilization

Few color cosmetics have accumulated as much political meaning as lipstick. The social history of lipstick is not simply a history of beauty — it is a history of gender norms and power dynamics.

In 1912, cosmetics entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden distributed her “Red Door Red” lipstick to approximately 15,000 suffragettes participating in a women’s suffrage march in New York.^[13] To understand this act in context, one must consider the social climate of the time. Suffragists were ridiculed by opponents as “masculine, hysterical women,” and in response, they adopted a deliberate strategy of prominently displaying femininity.^[13] Red lipstick was central to that strategy. By openly flaunting cosmetics that had historically been taboo in the public sphere, they mounted a direct challenge to existing norms.

During World War II, lipstick acquired yet another layer of meaning. When it became known that Adolf Hitler detested makeup, red lipstick became a symbol of anti-Nazi resistance.^[13] The names of lipsticks released during this period — “Fighting Red!,” “Patriot Red!,” “Grenadier Red!” — demonstrate how cosmetics were enlisted as expressions of patriotism.^[13] Although wartime material shortages placed many consumer goods under rationing, lipstick in Britain was deliberately excluded from rationing. This was a decision made by Winston Churchill’s wartime cabinet to maintain morale.^[14]

In the postwar era, lipstick once again became a subject of debate. During the second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s, some activists defined makeup as a tool of patriarchal oppression and rejected it. In reaction, “lipstick feminism” emerged in the 1990s, asserting that femininity and feminism were not mutually exclusive.^[15] A single object, depending on the era, served as a tool of resistance, a symbol of oppression, and then a declaration of liberation.

The Art of Removal: From Cold Cream to Micellar Water

There is an aspect of cosmetics history that rarely receives attention: the evolution of removal techniques. Removing makeup was just as much a technical challenge as applying it, and the history of cleansing progressed in parallel with the history of cosmetics itself.

The oldest known makeup removal technique dates back to the 2nd-century Greek physician Galen (129–216 CE). Galen formulated a cream that dissolved impurities on the skin using a blend of rose water, beeswax, and olive oil (or almond oil).^[16] This was the prototype of “cold cream,” and in France, the formulation is still called cérat de Galien (Galen’s wax) to this day.^[16] The beeswax acted as an emulsifier to maintain a stable mixture of oil and water, which then dissolved the cosmetic residue on the skin.

It is remarkable that Galen’s cold cream was used for nearly 1,800 years with little fundamental change. When American pharmacist Theron Pond launched the first commercial cold cream — Pond’s — in 1846, its basic principle was not significantly different from Galen’s formulation.^[16] Meaningful change only came in the 20th century, with the emergence of soap-based cleansers, oil cleansers, cleansing lotions, and other formulations, each removing cosmetic residue through different chemical mechanisms.

The most notable innovation in modern cleansing technology is micellar water. Its origins trace back to France in 1913.^[17] In many French households, the high lime content in tap water made soap-based face washing irritating to the skin, and pharmacists developed a rinse-free cleanser using micelle technology to solve this problem.^[17] A micelle is a spherical arrangement of surfactant molecules in water: the interior is lipophilic (attracting oil) while the exterior is hydrophilic (attracting water). This structure traps the oily components of cosmetics so they can be rinsed away with water.

Micellar water gained global attention in 1991 when the French pharmaceutical company Bioderma launched “Sensibio H2O” for sensitive skin.^[17] It then spread explosively through beauty bloggers and social media in the 2010s. From cold cream to micellar water, the evolution of cleansing technology has ultimately been the story of solving one persistent problem: achieving maximum cleansing power with minimum irritation to the skin.

The Birth of Regulation: From Toxicity to Safety

As the cosmetics industry grew, so did the need for regulation. For thousands of years, cosmetics had been virtually unregulated, and consumers had no right to know what was in their products.

The turning point came in 1938 with the United States’ Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.^[18] Signed by President Franklin Roosevelt, this law was the first in history to bring cosmetics under legal regulation. It defined cosmetics as products “applied to the human body by rubbing, pouring, spraying… for the purpose of cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering appearance.”^[18] A critical point is that this law adopted a post-market enforcement approach rather than pre-market approval. The US FDA does not “approve” cosmetics. Instead, it prohibits the distribution of adulterated or mislabeled products.^[18]

Europe took a different approach. The EU Cosmetics Directive was established in 1976 and was later replaced by the more stringent EU Cosmetics Regulation (EC No 1223/2009) in 2009.^[19] The EU maintains a list of substances prohibited in cosmetics (a negative list), which includes over 1,600 chemical substances — far more extensive than the US FDA’s banned list of approximately 11 substances.^[19]

This difference is not merely administrative but reflects a philosophical divergence. The United States permits substances “until evidence of harm emerges,” while the EU applies the precautionary principle, restricting substances “until sufficient evidence of safety is established.” Considering that lead and mercury were applied to faces for millennia without any regulation, it is striking that both regulatory frameworks are barely a century old.

The Paradox of Color Cosmetics

From the era when ancient Egyptian chemists synthesized lead compounds to apply around their eyes, to the present day when regulatory agencies scrutinize every chemical substance listed on an ingredient label — the core tension running through the history of color cosmetics has remained unchanged. Makeup is the act of placing something “on” the skin, and whatever is placed there invariably affects the body. The Egyptians understood this and chose substances with therapeutic effects. Renaissance Europeans also understood this but accepted the toxicity for the sake of aesthetic results. The modern industry attempts to resolve this tension through the concept of “safe ingredients.”

Yet the most fascinating aspect of this history lies elsewhere. The red lips that were a stigma in Athens were a mark of royalty in Sumer, a symbol of resistance during the 20th-century suffrage movement, and a tool of patriotism during World War II. The same chemical substance, the same red color, the same act performed on the same pair of lips was assigned entirely different meanings depending on the time and place. The reason color cosmetics have endured for thousands of years is not simply that they change one’s appearance. It is because they serve as the surface upon which society inscribes meaning onto individuals — or upon which individuals declare meaning back to society.