She was born on April 11, 1987 in Boston, Massachusetts to Vietnamese immigrant parents. Michelle Phan has an older brother, Steve Phan, and a younger sister, Christine Phan. Her father worked as a flooring specialist, while her mother was a manicurist. Money was always tight in the Phan household largely due to her father's gambling addiction and unstable work. When Michelle Phan turned 6, she and her family relocated to Tampa, Florida. By then her father's gambling had spun out of control causing her parents to ultimately divorce. Despite such tensions at home, Michelle Phan managed to graduate with honors from Tampa Bay Technical High School in 2005 and was accepted into Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida.
During her freshman year in college, Michelle Phan created a personal blog about makeup and beauty tips on the Xanga platform with the username, RiceBunny. Within just two years, her blog would acquire a total of 10,000 regular readers. In 2007, Michelle Phan began uploading her vlogs on her own YouTube channel. In 2009 and 2010, two of Michelle Phan's tutorial vlogs on eye makeup titled as How To Get Lady Gaga's Eyes were featured on BuzzFeed which significantly contributed to the videos going viral boosting the total number of subscribers to her YouTube channel to over a million. Michelle Phan was then well on her way to becoming one of the brightest young stars on YouTube. At present, Michelle Phan's YouTube channel has over 8 million subscribers, 1.1 billion lifetime views and 385 uploaded videos.
In 2009, Michelle Phan was approached by one of her biggest fans, Kerry Diamond, who was then also the vice-president of publicity for Lancôme. Shortly thereafter, Michelle Phan became Lancôme's official video makeup artist. In 2011, she launched and co-founded My Glam, which has since been renamed as Ipsy, a monthly beauty products subscription service. The following year, Michelle Phan became a YouTube advertising partner and launched FAWN, a YouTube multi-channel network. On August of 2013, Michelle Phan launched her own cosmetics line with L'oreal called Em, which in Vietnamese means "little sister". Although the cosmetics line did not do so well, Michelle Phan managed to bounce back the following year with the launching of ICON, an online and television network dedicated to beauty, lifestyle and entertainment. In 2015, Michelle Phan raised $100 million USD for Ipsy making her company's total value at $500 million USD. According to CelebrityNetWorth.com, Michelle Phan's total worth is $50 million USD.Michelle Phan is in a long-term relationship with male model, Dominique Capraro.
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