”As children, females are still patted on the head and told, `Oh, if you have a career, you`re not going to have a husband,”` says Georgette Mosbacher. ”There are people who still believe that.”
She is not one of them-for obvious reasons. She has a very successful career and she has had three husbands.
Until recently, the vivacious, 44-year-old Mosbacher was chief executive officer of La Prairie Inc., a skin-care and cosmetics company known for making one of the most expensive face creams in the world. She bought the company in 1988 for $31 million; in June 1991 she sold it to Beiersdorf Group of Germany (makers of Nivea) for $45 million.
And she is presently married to Robert Mosbacher, a Texas millionaire who recently resigned as Secretary of Commerce to head President Bush`s re-election campaign.
Although her husband is worth $200 million, Mosbacher is justifiably proud that she didn`t use any of her husband`s fortune to buy La Prairie. Well, her husband introduced her to the Chemical Bank officer who gave her the loan, but first she convinced a group of investors in her vision: the glamor- for-profit side of $80-an-ounce elixirs derived from black sheep placentas.
”It was one of the biggest risks of my life,” Mosbacher said in a telephone interview. ”I not only risked everything I had financially, but also the money of other people who believed in me. And, I risked my self-esteem, since I wasn`t doing it in the dark. If I failed, I would fail where everyone could see me.”
With her scalding red hair, high-voltage smile and wardrobe of Christian Lacroix evening dresses (not to mention the King Charles spaniel who`s usually sprawled on her office floor), Mosbacher is used to the limelight and the scrutiny it brings.
So how did she deal with the anxiety?
”Just as you can condition yourself to brush your teeth every day, you can teach yourself to make that everyday fear work for you.”
It`s a habit she picked up early in life. The former Georgette Paulsin of Highland, Ind., was only 7 years old when her father died, the victim of a drunken driver.
”I was the oldest of (four in) a one-parent family, so at a very early age I had to shoulder responsibilities that were thrust upon me,” she says.
”That kind of experience can condition you.” Her first lesson: in life, there are no guarantees.
She worked several jobs-model, clerk, switchboard operator-to put herself through Indiana University. After graduating with a degree in communications, she moved to California, married an older man (Robert Muir, a real estate developer) and started her own TV commercial production company.
After seven years, and a divorce, she headed to New York, where she worked in the licensing department of Faberge, the cosmetics giant. Eventually, she married George Barrie, the chairman of Faberge; they separated after a year and divorced in two.
A friend suggested that she look up Robert Mosbacher, one of Texas`s most eligible bachelors, the next time she was in Houston. In 1984, she did and the two hit it off, although there are some obvious differences: He`s 20 years older, a scion of an Eastern family and passionate about sailing. (Mosbacher`s straightforward approach to dating her future third husband was mentioned in the 1989 Fortune magazine article about CEOs and ”trophy” wives.)
Not one to shy away from the limelight, Mosbacher-with her tattooed eyebrows and Bob Mackie dresses-became a fixture in Houston society. She began to keep track of her social obligations on her personal computer.
But her ambitions were higher; from her days at Faberge, she had focused on the idea of buying-or starting-her own cosmetics company.
”How do you eliminate the element of risk in life?” asks Mosbacher.
”Just to wake up in the morning and get of out of bed-there`s some risk in that. Those are the risks we don`t think of. But risks in business can be calculated. And those who are willing to step up and stare them squarely in the face can benefit.”
Certainly, Mosbacher was not known to dodge the nitty-gritty stuff. When visiting La Prairie counters in department stores, she would bring her own bottle of glass cleaner-just in case the display case needed a little extra polish.
Not that things always go her way. When she was robbed outside her penthouse apartment in New York last year, that was bad enough. But the newspaper headlines added insult to injury. ”Uzi thug mugs D.C. socialite,” one said. Another recorded the event this way: ”Bush aide`s wife mugged.”
Only later in both stories was it made clear that Mosbacher was a business executive in her own right.
”Two things are playing here,” she says. ”One is because I`m married to a wealthy man (she married Mosbacher in 1985), there is this feeling that, somehow, what I do or what happens to me, is less meaningful or less credible than for other people. The thinking, I guess, because I don`t need to do this in order to survive, is that it`s less meaningful. That, of course, is ridiculous because the only one you can count on in the end is yourself.”
The second factor, according to Mosbacher, is that ”men want to put us in little boxes that are clearly defined. But we don`t fit there any more. I just read an article on Marietta Tree (activist and former delegate to the United Nations). And her whole life, she had to say, `What do I have to do?
What does it take for me not to be called a socialite?”`
It`s an important question for Mosbacher. ”I go to an office (on Fifth Avenue in New York, where she`s heading new projects for Georgette Mosbacher Enterprises), I answer to my bankers, I do my cash flow. And yet because I go out at night and dress up, I`m a socialite. My male counterpart puts on his diamond studs and he`s a CEO.”
She makes it clear that she wishes to succeed-or fail-on her own terms, as her own person.
”Of course, my husband is a factor. I love him very much and he`s very important in my life. But the decisions I make, the goals I set for myself, first have to involve what I believe to be best for me. I`m fortunate in having a husband who is generous, but my well-being is not dependent on his generosity. My well-being is dependent only on what I am able to provide for myself.”
Yet the other side of the risk issue, says Mosbacher, is ”it doesn`t get any easier.” At the moment, she is embarking on a new business; her existing contract with La Prairie, where she is creative consultant, prevents her from discussing it, aside from saying it is in the personal care field.
”And I`m scared to death,” she admits. ”I have friends who say, `But you`ve done it once.` Uh-uh. It doesn`t work that way. Fear is fear. The only thing that`s different is while I`m no less frightened of it, I won`t hesitate as long to face it.”
