DAISY MARQUEZ

A lesser article on Daisy Marquez would spend an inordinate amount of time rehashing the obvious details: how Daisy is a self-taught makeup influencer and entrepreneur who rose to popularity on YouTube back in 2016 after combining her practical makeup tutorials with introspective content.

This article might go on to list some of her greatest hits: some high profile collabs with True Religion and Savage X Fenty; being the face of two different collections with Morphe; creating her own makeup palette with BH Cosmetics; launching her podcast Daisy Diaries. I dunno, maybe this article could cover some gossip or drama from her dating life to try to hold attention and then tell everyone how she’s the “next big thing” or “your next obsession” or “an icon in the making” or something that sounds epic on the surface but really doesn’t mean much at all.

When I first met Daisy, I linked up with the explicit intention to write something with a little more weight than an 8th grade English assignment. Something that dug a little deeper than “she does makeup and stuff.” I have not made a career out of discussing influencers and fashion icons. As a 30-something straight white dad, I’m not the target demographic. Not at all. And it doesn’t interest me one bit.

In fact, what fascinates me most about journalism in the beauty and fashion space at the moment is how they have somebody like Daisy Marquez in their midst – a veritable slow-pitched softball of a feature – and nobody has knocked her story out of the park. This is one of the easiest (and most inspiring) stories I’ve ever had the pleasure of writing.

To reduce Daisy Marquez to a “beauty influencer” is to completely ignore the time she crossed the border at age 9 with coyotes. Reducing her to a “podcaster” dismisses how that formative and traumatizing experience at such a young age instilled a steely resolve; and how subsequent years spent in Hispanic-American communities living under the shadow of possible deportation fostered a relentless work ethic, a tight-knit circle of friends and family, and a mind for finding clever solutions to pressing problems.

I’d like to refer to Daisy Marquez not by what she does but by what she actually is: a capable woman and a strategic thinker whose baser instincts are heavily tempered by a strong moral center and a love of her fellow humans.

“The reason why I even started social media is because I worked my ass off in high school to go to college, and I got accepted to the college that I wanted to go to, but because I am illegal they were charging me as an international student, and I was broke as fuck,” Daisy laughed during our nearly hour-long conversation.

But most overnight sensations don’t stay in business for nearly 10 years. Daisy Marquez wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t a proficient businesswoman – especially with the deck stacked against her due to her citizenship status. “Brands started inviting me to go to Bora Bora,” she recalled. “And Fashion week in Paris? Couldn’t do any of that because I’m undocumented. But I could go to Hawaii. So I made the most of it. I'm very, very hands on with all my projects. I have always told myself the sky's the limit.”

While she’s grateful for the success that’s come her way, she acknowledged that the sudden, viral scale came at a cost. “I went on a meet-and-greet tour in 2019,” she confessed. “I was unable to finish it, because I got very depressed and I had to get hospitalized.”

Daisy cited this experience as one of the most formative experiences of her life. She had a particularly impactful interaction with one of the women at the hospital that admitted her. “After this lady asked me all these questions and checked me in, she was like, ‘Hey, I just want to let you know that I'm one of your biggest fans. I've been following you for years, and I'm so sorry that you're here,’” Daisy paused, still emotional all these years later. “I remember I broke down crying, and she said: ‘You have to get better. For people like me. You took me out of the darkness. Don't forget that you're a light in the darkness.’”

Having somebody remind her of the positive, selfless things her career could do for the world prompted some serious self-reflection. “Her telling me that made me say, ‘Oh my gosh! What am I doing? I'm fucking up my life. I'm very fortunate to be in this position. I need to get my shit together. So after I got out, I completely turned my life around.”

Laughing, she added, “Clearly I wasn’t thriving.” There was a visible shift in Daisy’s demeanor when she began talking about this new period in her life. “I really took some time off social media to reroute myself, and I feel like that's when I really started to flourish. I have an amazing team around me, you know? So me talking to that lady... I wonder what happened to her? She changed my life. I wouldn't be here now, so I'm very thankful for that experience.”

The more people I’ve met, the more I’ve realized that a common fear among hustlers like Daisy with a rigorous work ethic is that if you slow down – if you stop juggling so many tasks, spinning so many plates – everything you’ve ever built will come crashing down. Daisy and I bonded over our common experience entering treatment for burnout and the massive paradigm shift that comes from finding meaning in life outside of being busy.

“I mean, I started doing social media when I was 17, and I'm 27 now, and I appreciate privacy much more now,” she said. “I shared my entire life with the Internet, and that has allowed people to judge and comment about every single little thing of my life, and I'm okay with it. But hopefully, in 10 years, when I live on a farm with my cute garden, I don't want to have social media. If one day I decide that I just don't want to do social media, and I want to live a private, quiet life, I will have that luxury, thanks to the investments that I have made. Obviously, like, I make a lot of money on social media, because I'm an influencer. But social media can be very toxic, and it has allowed me to be very negative sometimes about myself." 

Daisy’s desire for a sustained, quiet future life inspired her to diversify her business endeavors during the pandemic. She started a short-lived canned wine delivery company in 2020 that not only served a unique and temporary need during the crisis but blessed her with enough income to invest in real estate.

“I genuinely invested in real estate because I wanted to have a backup plan, and it actually fascinates me,” Daisy said. She manages her properties with her mother and rents some of them to close family members. She finds great joy in working closely with her mom and in supporting her immediate and extended family.

Daisy was intelligent enough to know social media was fickle and that algorithms would change. She knew the pandemic wasn’t forever. So she made choices that set herself up for long-term financial success.

The smart financial decisions she made also allowed her to give back to others in deeply impactful ways. 

"And I was like, what have I done? Okay, I've shared makeup tutorials online. And I've helped girls become prettier. I don't know. When I realized that it was very vague and materialistic – all of the things that I had achieved in life – that's when I started my foundation.”

(I’d add that a lesser story about Daisy Marquez would make a pun about beauty influencers and foundation, but this is not that story).

Daisy was always quick to express her gratitude for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which was put in place under President Barack Obama in 2012. It was created for eligible young adults who were brought to the US as children to protect them from deportation by providing them with temporary work authorization.

“I'm under DACA, so DACA protects me from getting deported,” Daisy explained. She told me that immigration law is incredibly difficult to navigate. Those under DACA face regular costs the average citizen does not. “We have to renew our DACA every 2 years. And it’s $600. I’m very fortunate that I’m able to afford that, but somebody out there is a mom or is going to college, and $600 is a lot. So each month my foundation supports DACA recipients.”

Daisy doesn’t have any investors or major donors. “It's just money that I earn through social media or from my businesses. I take that stress off of them, and I pay for the renewal, or if they already renewed their DACA, I pay for advanced parole, so I have been able to help some people go back to their home country, which has been very beautiful. I just made a year with my foundation.”

Daisy has also been able to reflect on the deeper meaning of beauty, and the deeper value of communication. She told me she loves “a good yap sesh.” But she loves yapping because it allows people to feel heard, validated, and supported. She tried to channel that validation and support into her new perfume line.

“I am a girl that loves to dress up. I love to go to dinners. I'm very feminine, and I feel like I love to teach women how to be confident. Something that makes me confident is perfume.” She named it Bella Perversa.

“Bella Perversa means beautiful-but-dangerous, and I feel like a woman that uses her beauty to her advantage is a very dangerous woman.” With a sly smile she added, “Like a femme fatale.”

I’ve said a lot about Daisy Marquez, and somehow I don’t feel like I’ve said enough. I haven’t mentioned her love of the 5 bars and pool tables and all the cute cowboys at Red River, a country club in Texas she recently fell in love with. I haven’t mentioned how Daisy is good at pool, ice skating, roller skating, and competitive dancing. Or how she loves going to the rodeo in Fort Worth.

“In LA I’m dressed up in heels. Over here I’m in my cowboy boots,” she laughed. “I take pride and joy in just providing for my family, providing that safety net for my sisters, giving back to my community, and just being a bad bitch with my perfume.”

I told her that was a mic-drop sentence if there ever was one, and she laughed. A lesser story would end there just because it’s a badass line. In reality, being a “bad bitch with [her] perfume” isn’t the legacy Daisy wants to leave.

“I hope that even when I pass away, my perfume is still out there,” Daisy thought out loud. “And my foundation? Hopefully, my sisters will take over that. So I really am just trying to build my own little empire, and leave a legacy behind and really make an impact in the world, whether it's in the beauty community, or with my non-profit somehow. I just want people to remember.”

You can follow Daisy Marquez on Instagram here.