E.l.f. Beauty founder to be ordained as Catholic priest at 52

Scott Vincent Borba’s journey from cosmetic industry wealth to the altar will culminate Saturday in Visalia, where the 52-year-old founder of e.l.f. Beauty will be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. The Diocese of Fresno scheduled the ordination for 10:30 a.m. at St. Charles Borromeo Church, with Borba joining Marco Ayala and Jose Francisco Orozco as ordinands.

His age makes the move unusual in a church where adult vocations often arrive earlier. ABC7 San Francisco reported that the average age for new priests is 33 and that only about 3% of current seminarians are over 50. Borba, a Visalia native now living as a deacon and seminarian at St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, is stepping into priesthood after a long public life built far from it.

Borba has said he first felt called to religious life at age 10, but pushed that calling aside for decades. In his telling, the turning point came in his 40s, when he asked God for help and experienced what he described as “a massive flood of love and mercy.” After that moment, he said he gave away his fortune to charity and stripped his life down to almost nothing, now living in a tiny room with only a few clothes and shoes.

Before seminary, Borba had built a very different kind of resume. He co-founded e.l.f. Cosmetics, later known as e.l.f. Beauty, in 2004 after studying at Santa Clara University, and became known as an esthetician to the stars. His world once included an office in Beverly Hills, a beach house, expensive cars and the celebrity orbit of Paris Hilton, the Kardashians and Mila Kunis. He reportedly gave Kunis a $7,000 facial with diamond and ruby microcrystals at the 2011 Golden Globes.

That life delivered visibility and money, but Borba has said it did not deliver peace. He has described feeling empty, exhausted and unhappy before reorienting toward faith, and now says he has “never been happier” in his life. His ordination will turn that private conversion into a public office, a rare reversal in American success culture, where accumulation is usually the endpoint and renunciation is the exception.