Molly Sims built YSE Beauty for the woman the beauty industry ignored. Here’s how she did it; and what’s actually worth buying.
She was 46, fed up, and absolutely certain the beauty industry had it wrong. Turns out, she was right.
There is a moment in the middle of the Milken Institute Global Conference, surrounded by economists, technologists, and capital allocators, when Molly Sims says something that makes the whole room laugh, then think.
She’s talking about walking into Sephora to pitch her skincare brand, and she looks the buyer dead in the eye and says: You need me.
That’s YSE Beauty in a sentence.
Not apologetic.
Not carefully positioned.
Just genuinely, cheerfully certain that there was a woman being left out of the conversation; and that Molly was the one who was going to fix it.
She was right. YSE Beauty, pronounced “wise” (as in having good judgment, most of the time, per the brand’s own winking tagline), is now carried in Sephora nationwide, has won Allure’s Best of Beauty award, and has been recognized by ELLE’s Future of Beauty Awards and Harper’s Bazaar. The brand’s hero product, the Your Favorite Ex™ Barrier-Friendly Exfoliating Pads, at $75, has a following that borders on devoted. And Molly built all of it in her mid-forties, after a career that had already included modeling, acting, hosting, podcasting, and producing.
The Woman the Industry Forgot
YSE Beauty was born from a specific frustration. When Molly turned 40, the cystic acne she’d dealt with earlier in life gave way to hyperpigmentation and melasma. She looked at the beauty landscape and found two options: the cool, fun, trend-forward brands that weren’t built with her skin in mind, and the clinical derm-grade products that worked but felt, as she puts it, like a punishment.
“Beauty wasn’t speaking to the 40-plus-year-old woman,”
she said on stage at Milken.
“They’re just now realizing, oh, we control the pocketbook.”
The insight driving YSE’s formulation philosophy is the barrier. Where much of the aggressive skincare trend of the past decade pushed exfoliation harder: CO2 lasers, harsh retinols, layered acid treatments , Molly built toward consistency and gentleness.
The Your Favorite Ex Pads are barrier-friendly by design, formulated for daily use rather than the occasional scorched-earth reset. The Morning Cocktail Vitamin C Brightening Serum ($85) and Last Call Gentle Daily Retinol Serum follow the same logic: active ingredients, calibrated delivery, no drama.
“The magic is doing something every single day,”
sims said.
“It’s not burning off your barrier.”
Disciplined Growth, on Purpose
Here’s the thing about Molly Sims that the beauty press sometimes breezes past: she is a genuinely sharp operator. She raised $15 million in a Series A, per her own statement at Milken, and talks about it the way a founder who has done the work talks about it. Not like a celebrity who got lucky.
Her version of disciplined growth means she knew her customer before she took retail. “I wanted to know who she was first,” she said. “I wanted to know how she buys.” She named her core customers — Amy, Lauren, Jennifer — the way a good brand strategist names personas. She built verticals: a humor vertical, a mom vertical, an aspirational model vertical, each one speaking to a different facet of the same woman. And she held the line on product philosophy when pushback came from inside the building.
When her team questioned the product names — Morning Cocktail, Last Call, your Favorite Ex — she didn’t flinch. “I’m not going to change them,” she said. “This is how I’m going to do it.”
The Sephora entry is a case study in timing and confidence. Molly didn’t pursue retail until she understood her customer’s behavior in a DTC environment. When she walked into the pitch, she wasn’t asking. She was telling them what they were missing: the woman in her forties whose daughter was dragging her through the store and who had nowhere to go. “You need me,” she told them. They said yes.
The Advantage of Starting at 46
Daphne Oz, who hosted the conversation at Milken for her forthcoming podcast The Mothership, pushed Molly on this directly: what would a 25-year-old version of herself have done differently with YSE?
Everything, basically.
“I come from the no generation,” Molly said. Decades of being told she was too tall, too pretty, too blonde, not serious enough — all of it built armor that a younger founder simply doesn’t have yet. The discipline to say no to investors before she was ready. The clarity to fire fast when culture broke. The gut to override the room when she knew she was right.
Her daughter Scarlett, looking at color drawings on the kitchen counter, told her a recent product concept was “more of a hydration story.” Molly looked at her like she’d grown a second head. Then immediately considered the note.
“I hire smarter women than me,” Molly said. “My number one superpower is I listen. I keep my gut, but I listen.”
Mini FAQ
What is YSE Beauty and who is it for?
YSE Beauty is a skincare brand founded by Molly Sims, designed specifically for women 35 and older dealing with concerns like hyperpigmentation, melasma, and barrier damage. The brand focuses on clinically effective, barrier-friendly formulas that work with daily consistency rather than aggressive treatments. YSE Beauty is available DTC at ysebeauty.com and in Sephora stores nationwide.
What is the YSE Beauty hero product?
The Your Favorite Ex™ Barrier-Friendly Exfoliating Pads ($75) are widely considered the brand’s breakout product — designed for sensitive skin that still needs regular exfoliation, without stripping the skin barrier. The brand also counts the Morning Cocktail Vitamin C Brightening Serum and Last Call Gentle Daily Retinol Serum among its most-recommended products.
What awards has YSE Beauty won?
YSE Beauty has been recognized by Allure’s Best of Beauty Awards 2025, ELLE’s Future of Beauty Awards 2025, and has received coverage from Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes, and Marie Claire, among others.
The Bottom Line
If you’ve been circling the YSE Beauty orbit — curious, maybe a little skeptical about whether it lives up to the founder’s energy — the conversation Molly had at Milken is the clearest case she’s made yet for the brand she built. It isn’t about celebrity. It’s about a woman who paid close attention, took her time, and then walked into every room like she already knew how it ended.
The Your Favorite Ex Pads are a good place to start. So is the Morning Cocktail. So is the idea that midlife isn’t a liability — it’s the whole point.
Shop YSE Beauty at ysebeauty.com.
