Romanian cosmetics entrepreneur Christine Valmy died at “C.C Iliescu” Hospital in Bucharest on Sunday night, due to a severe lung complication, medical sources told Mediafax.
Valmy, aged 88, was admitted to “C.C. Iliescu” Institute since January 8 for pneumonia and other chronic cardiac affections. She has been suffering of atrial fibrillation for more than 10 years and had a pacemaker. She has suffered of more strokes in the past months.
Christine Valmy, by her real name Cristina Xantopol, was born on October 25, 1926 in Bucharest. She was an esthetician, consultant, and entrepreneur known as a pioneer in the fields of Skin Care and Esthetics in the United States, where she worked for many years. Valmy actually founded the first esthetics school in the United States in 1966, and is widely credited as one of the most influential figures in modern esthetics.
She graduated the Law School of the University of Bucharest in 1946. During this period, she took a course in dermatology and skin care, which will later form the foundation of her career as an esthetician. In 1948, she opens her first salon in Bucharest, offering skin treatments based on traditional botanical remedies. To avoid the Communist pressures imposed by the Soviet Union she immigrated to Greece together with her family in 1959. After working as the representative of a cosmetics company for Greece and Israel, Valmy and her family emigrated in the United States in 1960 penniless and unable to speak the language. In June 1966, Christine Valmy opened her first skin care school in New York.