Scott-Vincent Borba, the co-founder of e.l.f. Cosmetics has ditched the multimillion-dollar high life of hobnobbing with the hot likes of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian to pursue priesthood.
Donating his entire fortune — including cash, cars and a cushy California beach house — to charity, the “Father” to-be denounced his lavish lifestyle after having a come-to-Jesus moment at an industry party.
It’s a career shift of Prodigal Son proportions.
Borba, 52, will be ordained as a Catholic priest in his hometown of Visalia, Calif., by the Diocese of Fresno on May 23, finally answering the call of clergy after ignoring it for decades to build his beauty empire with an estimated net worth of $3 billion.
“I was a poster boy for luxury living,” Borba confessed to ABC7 of his hedonistic habits as a head honcho at e.l.f. An acronym for “Eyes Lips Face,” it’s a cruelty-free makeup imprint he co-created with father and son Alan and Joseph Shamah in 2004.
The brand rose to renown during the 2010s, reaching $100 million in sales by 2014, per Forbes.
And Borba, a former esthetician to A-listers such as actress Mila Kunis, who he once gave a $7,000 diamond facial, feasted on the fruits of its success until leaving e.l.f. in 2019 — long before Hailey Bieber sold her Rhode label to the company for $1 billion in 2025.
Now a deacon and seminarian at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, Calif., the reformed reveler resides in a small room with nothing more than a crucifix as wall décor.
The Post has reached out to St. Patrick’s Seminary for comment.
“My life has been culled down to the bare minimum,” said Borba, admitting, however, “I have never been happier in my life.”
That unprecedented joy came after being struck with a sudden sense of misery.
“I was at a party and I was very, very unhappy,” Borba told OSV News. “I just felt like I was empty and I was empty. I was exhausted. I was burning the candle on both ends.”
“I said, ‘God, if this is life, where all you do is work and party and do that all over again and die, then this is not the life that I think that you have made for me. But I can only change if you help me,’” he said. “I said, ‘Help me … I don’t want to do this [anymore].’”
Following his plea of contrition, Borba, then in his 40s, felt convinced to forgo his worldly goods — but he didn’t let them go without a little resistance.
“God called me to give up everything, and I thought that meant just my cars,” he laughed. “So I had an Aston Martin convertible, and I said, ‘All right, Lord, I’m gonna sell this car, give the money to charity, and then use some other money to get myself a truck.’”
But that wasn’t good enough for the Man Upstairs, remembered Borba. “He said, ‘Give it all up.’”
It was an act of total submission that came after years of doing things his own way.
He had previously turned a deaf ear to the Lord’s voice in the third grade, when his mother suggested he grow up to become a clergyman.
“At Mass, she asked me to look up at the altar, and if I wanted to be the man in the robes,” Borba said. “Whoever the priest was, his robes at that moment were shimmering like glitter… And I knew God was placing on my heart to become a priest.”
Unwilling to abandon his own career plans at the time, Borba went on to college before moving to Los Angeles to make it big in the world of glam. But he believes Mary, the Mother of God, has guided him back to the church.
“I asked Mary to stay with me, to keep me and to hold me throughout my entire life,” Borba said he prayed as a child, acknowledging that his petition had come to fruition.
“I know that our Blessed Mother has brought me into this vocation because of her love for me and for her Son.”
