In 2012, one of the most photographed women on the planet agreed to co-own a haircare startup few Americans have heard of. It is not a reality show or a perfume line with her face on the label; it is a business built around product development and patents. Four years later, Unilever, the same conglomerate behind Dove and Suave, agreed to buy the whole company up.
It's a curious situation for a culture so used to celebrities "launching" skincare lines with little substantive difference between a white-label and an endorsed product. According to MIT News, Living Proof, the company at the heart of the deal, wasn't dreamed up in a marketing meeting, but grew in the bioengineering lab of MIT professor Robert Langer, a highly prolific scientist. Jennifer Aniston came later, as an investor and face of the company, not its founder.
