Michelle Phan has always had a fascination with art and cosmetics. Rather than pursue a career as a doctor as her mother wanted her to, Phan decided to pursue her fascinations instead. The result was her becoming  the most recognizable face in the YouTube beauty community as well as an accidental millionaire.

In 2006, Michelle Phan started a personal blog in which she discussed different makeup tutorials. After receiving  requests for further instruction, she began posting tutorial vlogs on Xanga under the username Ricebunny and  began publishing on YouTube in May, 2007. Although they were uncommon at the time, Phan implemented some special effects and voice-over narration in her videos. These unique styles proved to be quite popular and Phan’s video’s became viral after they  were featured on Buzzfeed in 2009 and 2010.In particular, her “Lady Gaga Poker Face Tutorial and Lady Gaga Bad Romance Look brought her over a million subscribers.

After noticing that Phan included some of their products in her beauty product review videos, Lancome made Phan their official video make-up artist. In 2011, Phan co-founded a monthly beauty subscription  service (now called Ipsy) that is filled with various beauty products that are associated to tutorials on her website. Phan also became a YouTube advertising partner and launched FAWN, a YouTube MCN (multi-channel network) in 2012. In May 2013, Ipsy hosted Generation Beauty, a conference in Los Angeles for beauty bloggers and online beauty content creators. And in August, 2013, Phan in conjunction with the L’Oreal Group launched a new cosmetic line called EM Michelle Phan.