Zone1 E.l.f. Cosmetics Founder Set to Become a Catholic Priest After Completely Renouncing His Fortune

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E.l.f. Cosmetics Founder Set to Become a Catholic Priest After Completely Renouncing His Fortune

Scott Vincent Borba, the co-founder of Oakland-based e.l.f. Cosmetics, has given up his vast makeup fortune in favor of becoming a priest. Borba, 52, is currently preparing to be ordained as a Catholi...

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Scott Vincent Borba, the co-founder of Oakland-based e.l.f. Cosmetics, has given up his vast makeup fortune in favor of becoming a priest.

Borba, 52, is currently preparing to be ordained as a Catholic priest on May 23 in Visalia by the Diocese of Fresno, according to a report from ABC7.

The lifestyle is a far cry from the one he previously led as the founder of the popular and highly successful makeup brand.



“We ran around with the likes of Paris Hilton, and partying with Kardashians and just doing up the Hollywood life,” Borba told ABC7. “I was a poster boy for luxury living. I was not in any which way humble. I was very prideful.”


Although he says he felt the call to the priesthood at the age of 10, he resisted it in his 40s when his lavish Los Angeles lifestyle finally stopped giving him comfort. He described it as a “sudden loss of joy” that led him back to his religion.

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

e.l.f. Cosmetics — which stands for “Eyes, Lips, Face” — exploded onto the market with its cruelty-free cosmetics at an incredibly low price point. According to Forbes, it made its first $100 million within ten years of its founding in 2004.



Borba made the decision to renounce his fortune in 2019 and became a deacon and a seminarian at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park.

The former makeup artist hasn’t looked back since making the decision to commit his life to the Catholic Church and now he’s set to become a priest after years of study and work.

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

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

You don't hear many stories like this in the news.

But you do see the Catholic church growing for the first time in a long time

Why does everyone think that is?

 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/us/catholics-converts.html

People are joining the Roman Catholic Church in surprising numbers.

This Easter the Archdiocese of Detroit will receive 1,428 new Catholics into the church, its highest number in 21 years. The Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston will have its most in 15 years. In the Diocese of Des Moines, the count is jumping 51 percent from last year, from 265 people to 400.

The first year after the election of Pope Leo XIV, the first pontiff from the United States, many Catholic churches across America are welcoming their highest numbers of new Catholics in recent years. The newcomers are set to officially be received into the church during the Easter Vigil Mass, the night before Easter Sunday on April 5.

Bishops are buzzing about the surge, and confounded by what is behind it.

“Of course we think the Holy Spirit is,” Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington said. “But we are kind of stymied.”

His own archdiocese is set to have 1,755 people enter the church this Easter, up from last year’s 1,566, which had already been the highest number in at least 15 years, according to the archdiocese’s records. Others have noticed similar trends.