e.l.f. Cosmetics Co-Founder Gives Up Fortune to Become Catholic Priest: ‘I Have Never Been Happier’

Scott-Vincent Borba co-founded e.l.f. Cosmetics in 2004

NEED TO KNOW

• Scott-Vincent Borba, co-founder of e.l.f. Cosmetics, will be ordained as a Catholic priest on May 23
• Borba gave up his fortune and luxury lifestyle after feeling unfulfilled and reconnecting with his faith in his 40s
• He now lives a humble life as a deacon and seminarian, dedicating himself fully to ministry and charity

Scott-Vincent Borba, co-founder of the makeup brand e.l.f. Cosmetics, has forged a new path in life as a Catholic priest after selling his makeup fortune. 

The former makeup brand leader, 52, will be ordained as a Catholic priest in his hometown of Visalia, Calif., by the Diocese of Fresno on May 23, officially marking a new chapter years after his departure from e.l.f. Cosmetics, ABC 7 reported.

“I have never been happier in my life,” Borba told ABC 7. “Once I started to reorient myself, recalibrate myself with God’s help to the focus to Him, the joy started coming.”

Borba founded the cruelty-free makeup brand e.l.f. Cosmetics — which stands for “Eyes Lips Face” — with father and son Alan and Joseph Shamah in 2004. The brand was successful by the mid-2010s, due to its affordable prices and ethical products, reaching $100 million in sales by 2014, according to Forbes. 

Borba announced in a 2019 interview on CBS 47 that he was committing his life to the ministry after giving up his makeup fortune as he opened up about his unfulfilling lifestyle in his earlier years.

“I was vapid. I had a perversed life,” said Borba. “I went to L.A., I got sucked into the Hollywood lifestyle — it was almost to a point where I was trying to sell my soul, right, for all of the riches of the world, which is not what we’re supposed to be … I was living for myself … I was a poster boy for luxury.”

Borba said that he had felt a calling of becoming a priest “ever since I can remember” and “finally accepted the call about maybe three years ago.”

Borba told ABC 7 that he always felt connected to religion as a child but suppressed his religious side for decades during his company’s success. It wasn’t until his 40s that he turned to religion again after experiencing a “sudden loss of joy.”

“I asked our Lord to help me be the man that he created me to be. And upon that instance, I had this massive flood of love and mercy that came into my life,” Borba told ABC 7. “It was a very mystical experience.”

It was then that Borba decided to give up his fortune acquired from e.l.f. Cosmetics to charity and commit to ministry, per ABC 7.

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Borba is now a deacon and a seminarian at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, living a much more humble life than before.

“I live in a little tiny room … it’s sparse, nothing in it,” he told ABC 7. “I have a few bits of clothes and a few pairs of shoes. And my life has been culled down to the bare minimum.”

PEOPLE has reached out to St. Patrick’s Seminary for comment.