About
Emily Weiss is the Connecticut-born entrepreneur behind Glossier, the beauty brand that went from four “skin-first” products in 2014 to a $1.2 billion unicorn loved for its pink-capped tubes and crowd-sourced formulas.
After eight years as chief executive, she handed the day-to-day reins to longtime lieutenant Kyle Leahy in May 2022 and switched to an executive-chair role, a move Weiss framed as letting a builder run what she had started.
Today she focuses on brand vision, product ideas, and the community of fans still glued to the Instagram handle she launched back in her blog days. At 40, Weiss likes to say she’s in her “mum era,” juggling board meetings with toddler snack requests—and finding that both require the same blend of optimism and practicality.
Before Fame
Growing up in Wilton, Connecticut, Weiss spent weekends flipping through fashion magazines while her dad, an executive at Pitney Bowes, and her stay-at-home mom encouraged every creative experiment.
By high school she had lined up a summer gig at Ralph Lauren; at 18 she moved to New York to study studio art at NYU, squeezing internships at Teen Vogue, W, and Vogue around classes.
MTV viewers first spotted her in 2007 on The Hills as the laser-focused “super intern” flown in from New York to help Lauren Conrad with a Teen Vogue project—an early pop-culture cameo that hinted at her future knack for turning hustle into headlines.
While styling shoots for Vogue, Weiss kept waking up at 4 a.m. to publish Q&As on a side project she called Into The Gloss, a beauty blog built on candid bathroom-cabinet tours. The blog’s runaway success—and the conversations it sparked—planted the seed for a consumer brand driven by reader feedback.
Trivia
- Reality-TV Easter egg: Hardcore The Hills fans still trade GIFs of Weiss choosing flowers more efficiently than the main cast. She once joked that reality-show editing taught her as much about storytelling as any business book.
- 4-Product Launch: Glossier debuted with just a moisturizer, a skin tint, a balm, and a facial mist—proof that a tiny lineup can make a loud entrance when the community is involved.
- Unicorn in Pink: When investors valued Glossier at $1.2 billion in 2019, Weiss celebrated with the team at headquarters—no champagne tower, only tacos and the brand’s signature glazed-doughnut cake.
- Time & Forbes Honors: She has appeared on TIME’s Next 100, Vanity Fair’s New Establishment, and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Hall of Fame, but insists the compliment that thrills her most is hearing a teenager call Balm Dotcom a “lifesaver” during midterms.
- Design Habit: Weiss keeps a shoebox of rejected Glossier caps in her office because, as she’s said, “color matching a millimeter off can change the feeling of a whole brand.”
Family Life
Weiss’s personal timeline has been as eventful as her professional one. A brief 2016 marriage to photographer Diego Dueñas ended quietly, and in 2020 she became engaged to Stripe executive Will Gaybrick.
Their daughter, Clara Lion Weissbrick, arrived on June 29, 2022, prompting Weiss to hand over the CEO badge and lean into flexible hours. She announced Clara’s birth with a single red-heart emoji on Instagram, a characteristically minimalist reveal.
Motherhood, she says, has slowed her famously swift decision-making; product launches now share calendar space with daycare pickups, and Clara has already sampled (and tried to eat) more Balm Dotcom tubes than most adults.
Associated With
- Kyle Leahy – Glossier’s current CEO and Weiss’s trusted operator, brought in to scale retail and wholesale while staying true to the brand’s chatty DNA.
- Olivia Rodrigo – The Grammy-winning singer became Glossier’s first celebrity ambassador in 2022, a partnership Weiss green-lit to speak to Gen Z without filters.
- Lauren Conrad & Whitney Port – Former Teen Vogue colleagues whose MTV storyline unintentionally introduced Weiss to millions of viewers long before Glossier existed.
- Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures – Early investor and board advisor who supported the community-first model when traditional beauty insiders were skeptical.
- The Glossier Community – More than a customer base, they are co-creators; fan suggestions have led to cult favorites like Boy Brow and Milky Jelly Cleanser. Weiss often says they are the people who keep her curious every single day.
