Beauty For Real’s 62-Year-Old Founder Leslie Munsell’s Makeup Tips Are Going Viral With Young Consumers On TikTok

Donna Lopez, founder of beauty brand development agency Making Lemonade, believes no founder is too old to go on TikTok—and her 62-year-old client Leslie Munsell, founder of the cosmetics brand Beauty For Real, is validating her belief.

In October, informed by her 30-plus years as a makeup artist, Munsell started posting TikTok videos on products (sales of her Golden Hour Eyeshadow Palette have tripled as a result of the exposure), makeup techniques (e.g., people with hooded eyes should try a winged eyeliner look extending from the lower lash line), and life lessons (“It’s really easy to overdo the theme when a certain holiday rolls around,” she warns). Roughly a month after she went on the platform, she surpassed 3 million views, 18,000 followers and 395,000 likes.

A TikTok video of Munsell’s on skillful lip lining has attracted 1.5 million views. Hastened by the social media exposure, sales of Beauty For Real’s lip liner multiplied fivefold. Another video showing her press complexion product into her skin with her fingers—“They’re always there, and you can’t lose them,” she reasons—has garnered more than 291,000 views. Yet another video of her applying Beauty For Real’s Hi-Def Mascara featuring a tiny brush applicator has drawn 15,600 views. “Size does matter,” declares Munsell in the video. Sales of Beauty For Real’s mascara, a perennial bestseller, doubled within about six weeks.

“We always had Instagram and Facebook, and we’ve always wanted to gear Beauty For Real to be more of an e-commerce brand. She [Lopez] said, ‘OK, you need to get on TikTok,’ meaning me personally, not necessarily Beauty For Real the brand, doing tips and tricks,” says Munsell. “I do it in a way where I’m just talking to somebody, which I think really works on TikTok because what people want to see is someone just being real.” Lopez says, “We are building out the founder-led authority of the brand, and leaning into Leslie and her authority.”

Munsell launched Beauty For Real a decade ago, when she was in her 50s, and figured the brand’s audience was her peers, but a funny thing started to happen with its demographics. Partly due to its participation in Ipsy and Boxycharm partnerships, it began to develop a millennial and gen Z following. Lopez, who was formerly a VP at Boxycharm and buyer at HSN, determined Beauty For Real should capitalize on the younger following.

“If the customer is on TikTok, that’s where the brand should be going.”

“If the customer is on TikTok, that’s where the brand should be going,” says Lopez, estimating millennial and gen Z consumers currently constitute 40% of Beauty For Real’s customer base. Speaking of the brand, she says, “For a long time, it was all about telling the story of highly effective products and long wear. We moved into, this is a brand for women of every stage of life. That started taking the brand to new heights.” Lopez continues, “The brand doesn’t look like most brands that are quote unquote geared to women over 60. I’m 34, and I wear the products every day. Leslie rocks a blue smoky eye better than anybody. When Leslie goes on and talks about these topics or we feature mature women in collaboration with younger women, our sales will lift overnight by 10% to 15%.”

Munsell isn’t shy about going on camera without makeup or filters. While she dabbled in Botox in her 40s and 50s, she’s steered clear of more dramatic cosmetic procedures, although social media speculators conjecture frequently that she’s had a facelift (she hasn’t). Beauty For Real tends to choose models like her who embrace aging. It doesn’t retouch its images.

“We get comments from women who are younger who say, ‘This is great, now I’m not so afraid. It’s great to see a woman who is real,’” says Munsell. “I think that’s really gratifying because I feel like so many women are so afraid of aging, and they really shouldn’t be because it’s a wonderful part of life.” She emphasizes, “I like to really empower women to feel that they can own their beauty and the way they look, not feel like they have to look 30 at 60 because what’s wrong with being a great looking 60-year-old woman?”

Some non-gen Zers may not want to venture into TikTok territory for fear they will appear like cringey old people on the platform. Lopez says there are definitely people trying too hard to make it on TikTok. Munsell doesn’t. She shares basic information and isn’t overly flashy. She’s not jumping on every TikTok trend or perpetually hawking merchandise. Lopez says, “We are not pushing the brand in any other way than linking the brand in our bio.”

“This is a brand for women of every stage of life.”

For Munsell, TikTok is an extension of a job she held prior to Beauty For Real at Aveda, where she would train staff and do makeup for clients in the salon industry. She understands how to break down the makeup process to communicate it simply. Lopez stresses content consistency is key. The goal is to post daily, and Munsell has produced as many as 18 videos a day to pump out on TikTok. Lopez advises, “If you are going to make it work, you have to commit to it.”

Committing to it has helped Beauty For Real’s new customer acquisition spike 40% to 50%. Traffic from social media to its website jumped from practically nothing to 30%. Google accounts for 40% to 50%. The achievements have been particularly beneficial as Beauty For Real stepped away from HSN to concentrate on selling via its site. Overall, the brand’s sales increased 10% last year.

@lesliemunsell

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This year, Beauty For Real is amplifying its education and personalization strategies. It plans to double down on TikTok and expand its approach to the platform from focusing on Munsell to the brand, introduce an AI quiz on its site to direct customers to the right items for them and establish a presence on YouTube. “The majority of the time, it’s not about the product, it’s about the community,” says Lopez. “If they don’t know what’s in it for them, they are not going to buy.”