Toni Ko

Co-Founder, Jason Wu Beauty

The National Women's History Museum honored Ko at the 2016 Women Making History Awards.

Toni Ko is a Korean-American businesswoman and founder of NYX Cosmetics. She founded NYX Cosmetics in 1999 and expanded it until she sold it to L’Oréal in 2014 for $500 million.

Ko was born in Daegu, South Korea. In 1986, at the age of 13, her family immigrated to the United States. When she first arrived, she spoke no English and was placed directly in the seventh grade. She spent most of her teenage years working for her parents, who also worked in the cosmetics industry as wholesalers. She attended Glendale Community College on the weekends, and operated the business with her parents during the week, but eventually dropped out to work for her parents as a manager of their wholesale business full-time. With her prior experience in cosmetics, Toni sought to fill a gap in the market for lower-priced, high-quality makeup products. In 1999, Ko founded NYX Cosmetics named after the Greek goddess Nyx. Her original goal was to make a department store product with the price point of a drugstore product.

In 2020, Toni founded Bespoke Beauty Brands, parent to Jason Wu Beauty (and KimChi Chi Beauty).  Ko has received various awards in connection to her business work. According to Ko, the most meaningful award was her brand NYX Cosmetics receiving the WWD Inc. 2013 Beauty Brand of the Year.] In 2013, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Beauty Bus Foundation. In 2014, Toni added two more awards to her collection, winning the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Asian Business Association and the Leadership Award from the NAWBO. The National Women's History Museum honored Ko at the 2016 Women Making History Awards. In 2021, Ko ranked #94 on Forbes’ list of American Self-Made Women.