Makeup artist Lee Kyung-min is at the top of her profession, and a very successful businesswoman who runs her own beauty salon LeeKyungMin Foret, cosmetic brand Vidi Vici, and makeup artist training school LeeKyungMin Artchool. She says she found pleasure in her mother's makeup box from an early age.
To support her studies, Lee used to design advertising posters for shops and decorate walls on the street. She enrolled in the Department of Western Painting at Sungshin Women's University, studying anatomy and color theory. Her interest in the world of makeup deepened as well. When her friends went on dates, she would make them up for it and be paid in paint.
Lee joined a team of professional makeup artists at an agency when she was a junior in university, and that was the beginning of her professional career. At first, she suffered from neck and shoulder pains because she had to carry heavy makeup boxes wherever there were photo shoots.
She has been in charge of numerous big fashion shows and photo shoots for catalogs and magazines. Her impressive list of clients includes top actresses Kim Hye-soo, Ko So-young and Shim Eun-ha. "Only after I gave everything to each task did I begin to see the bigger picture. If you want to be someone whom people need, you have to do your best in the present, rather than always looking a step ahead", she says.