Mary Kay Ash, 83; Founded Direct-Sales Cosmetics Firm

Mary Kay Ash, whose cosmetics company and signature pink Cadillacs made her one of the most famous women in American business, died at her home in Dallas on Thursday. She was 83.

Ash, who had been in fragile health, died of natural causes, Mary Kay Inc. said in a news release.

“The world has lost one of its greatest champions of women and one of the most loving and inspirational business leaders,” said Ash’s son, Richard Rogers, who is also co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer at Mary Kay.

Founded with $5,000 in 1963, the business became one of the world’s largest direct-sales cosmetics companies, second only to Avon. With salespeople in 37 countries, Mary Kay reaped $1.3 billion in wholesale revenue last year. But Ash’s fans said she represented more than profits, enriching women’s lives at a time when corporate success was largely the province of their husbands.

“I wasn’t that interested in the dollars-and-cents part of business,” Ash once said. “My interest in starting Mary Kay Inc. was to offer women opportunities that didn’t exist anywhere else.”

As the ever-enthusiastic founder and chairwoman emeritus, Ash inspired devotion from her 400,000-member sales force. Each year her Dallas convention attracted thousands of saleswomen who paid their own way to hear, cheer and revere their leader.

With hard work, the saleswomen could climb the ranks to reach the prized position of national sales director. The job pays more than $800,000 annually, and company spokesman Randall Oxford said more than 150 women have earned at least $1 million working for Mary Kay.

Mary Kay created an award system designed especially for women, featuring mink coats, diamond rings and the famous pink Cadillacs. The company’s makeup containers were also pink, and Ash once owned a pink 19,000-square-foot mansion with a gigantic pink marble bathtub.

Ash was born Mary Kathlyn Wagner on May 12, 1918, in Houston. At 17 she married radio personality Ben Rogers, but when the marriage broke up, she found herself a single mother of three children.

She went to work selling household products, scrawling weekly sales goals in soap on her bathroom mirror. But in the early 1960s, the man who had been hired as her assistant was promoted above her at twice her salary. She quit and went on to found her pastel-hued empire.

“Those men didn’t believe a woman had brain matter at all. I learned back then that as long as men didn’t believe women could do anything, women were never going to have a chance,” she told Texas Monthly magazine in 1995.

Raised by a mother who worked long hours at a restaurant but always found time to root on her daughter, Ash maintained an open-door policy with her employees. Known for plain-spoken words of motherly advice, she told them that their careers ought to come third, behind God and family.

“We must figure out how to remain good wives and good mothers while triumphing in the workplace. This is no easy task for the woman who works full-time,” she wrote. “With your priorities in order, press on, and never look back. May all of your dreams come true. You can, indeed, have it all.”

Ash retired as chairwoman in 1987. Rogers, who left the company in 1992, returned this year as chief executive. The company has tried to maintain its growth by expanding overseas and targeting new markets, including teenagers.

Ash wrote three books, most recently “Mary Kay--You Can Have It All,” in 1995. All made bestseller lists.

Her husband, Dallas sales representative Mel Ash, whom she married in 1966, died of cancer in 1980. Her daughter, Marylyn Theard, died of pneumonia in 1991.

Ash is survived by two sons, 16 grandchildren, 28 great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandchild.