The Maybelline Company was created by a 19-year-old entrepreneur named Tom Lyle Williams in 1915. Williams noticed his older sister Mabel applying a mixture of Vaseline and coal dust to her eyelashes to give them a darker, fuller look.
He adapted it with a chemistry set and produced a product sold locally called lash-in-brow-line. Williams renamed his eye beautifier Maybelline, in honor of his sister Mabel, who gave him the idea. In 1917 the company produced Maybelline Cake Mascara, "the first modern eye cosmetic for everyday use" and Ultra Lash in the 1960s, which was the first mass-market automatic.[4]