Until he was 6, Jeff Lee’s first language was Chinese. Yet the child of Taiwanese immigrants who settled in Orange County, California, learned English swiftly, as American academics became a driving focus under the direction of his parents. By age 9, he had taken the SAT. At age 16, he was admitted to Stanford University. That was followed by Yale Law School and eventually a coveted spot in one of the world’s best-known law firms, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.
Lee explains, “I like to say my mom is the original ‘tiger mom.'” The term, which refers to a high-pressure style of parenting, was put into the popular lexicon by Amy Chua, who wrote Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and who happened to be one of Lee’s law professors at Yale. “There was a running joke that even she was scared of my own mom,” Lee says, laughing.
But if all work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy, then Lee, a contrarian, is one of the world’s most interesting men. In college, following a childhood fascination with the Miss Universe pageant, he began moonlighting as a pro bono coach for contestants, flying around the globe to instruct the world’s most beautiful women on poise, presentation, fitness and image. In 2016, GQ magazine chronicled his involvement in the competitions, dubbing him “Mr. Miss Universe.” He is currently the national coach for Peru, a country that hasn’t won a title for nearly 70 years, a losing streak Lee hopes to end.
Lee nurtures a long list of other interests, too, and not in a casual hobbyist sort of way. His passion for fitness, which his classmates at Stanford turned him onto during his freshman year, plays a large role in his life. He’s a certified personal trainer and is known for being the only person to have worked out at every Equinox gym in existence (over 100 of them). He also became fascinated with gems and jewelry design, so naturally, he earned his Applied Jewelry Professional diploma and has dabbled in the fine jewelry business. He guest teaches each year at Wharton, Stanford and Chicago Booth. Oh, and he’s a classically trained pianist and violinist.
With Lee’s long list of commitments, I inquire if he ever sleeps. He surprises me by saying, “Yeah, I’m a big believer in getting your total eight hours!” Because he’s often working late in New York to correspond with colleagues on the West Coast, he logs a portion of those eight hours in 45-minute naps throughout the day. He can fall asleep easily anywhere, a fact he attributes to being deaf in his right ear since birth. A few years ago, an infection in his left ear threatened his hearing entirely. “It was really one of the biggest blessings in my life,” he says, because he discovered that he could adapt if he had to, even if that meant having to learn sign language. Thankfully, the infection resolved with treatment, and it led to doctors suggesting, and successfully implanting, a device to restore hearing in his right ear, as well.
From A-Rod Corp COO to Beauty Entrepreneur
Lee is nothing if not adaptable. On the winding path from attorney to beauty brand entrepreneur, a formative stop was his role as chief operating officer of baseball legend Alex Rodriguez’s company A-Rod Corp. The two met in 2017 just as Lee finished his MBA at Stanford, and despite Lee having no baseball knowledge whatsoever, they hit it off immediately. At A-Rod Corp, an investment firm designed to diversify Rodriguez’s business interests into the areas of consumer products, real estate, fitness and media, Lee oversaw legal matters and many of the organization’s media projects—from a podcast called The Corp to A-Rod’s appearances on Shark Tank. It also put him close to Jennifer Lopez, who was at the time engaged to Rodriguez and launching her own cosmetics brand, JLo Beauty.
Lee already had his sights set on launching his own beauty line, so a friend introduced him to the founders of TULA Skincare who, in turn, connected him to beauty influencer Courtney Shields. The two met up on a video call during the pandemic, creative sparks flew, and they co-founded DIBS Beauty in September 2021.
What DIBS Beauty Stands For and Why It’s Growing So Fast
When Shields and Lee were batting around concepts and names for their cosmetics company, Shields mused that she had only ever encountered a handful of beauty items so treasured that she couldn’t do without them on a desert island. From there, the pair sought to create items so essential that they would have “desert-island-beauty status,” which spawned the acronym DIBS.
Many of DIBS’ products are multipurpose, like their hero product, a double-ended blush-and-bronzer stick. High-value items paired with influencer-led marketing strategies have proven to be a boon for the young company. Lee says they’ve experienced triple-digit growth each year. A partnership with the mega beauty store Ulta Beauty since summer 2024 has been particularly successful.
“The most important part of the commercial success [of DIBS] is that our strength is in all 50 states,” Lee says. He notes that Austin, Texas-based Shields knows Southern and Middle American audiences intimately, and his time visiting American baseball stadiums across the country with A-Rod was a window into this segment, too. Additionally, a large portion of the DIBS workforce is female. “My leadership team is all women—a significant number of working moms and a significant number of single moms—and that is a pillar of the company I’m very proud of.”
Championing Women in Beauty, Business and Miss Universe
Championing women is one of the through lines in Lee’s career and studies. At Stanford, he received the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for his research on how more women can be elected to presidencies in Latin America. He also teaches a “Women as CEOs, Entrepreneurs and Investors” class at Chicago Booth. He jokes about the irony of “mansplaining” women’s leadership, but the theme of being an outlier at the top resonates strongly with him, having been one of the few Asian lawyers in top law firms and as one of the few male Asian CEOs in the U.S.
With all this talk of female empowerment, I ask Lee how he responds to criticisms about the potentially damaging effects beauty pageants can have on women. He says, “You cannot duck from the fact that there is a swimsuit competition.” But he points out that, often, opportunities for women in many other countries are limited, saying, “What we’re doing for women is we’re also democratizing their access to fame and their access to opportunity.” Lee also says the competition can give women a platform. He recently coached model and actress Tatiana Calmell, competing as Miss Peru, and encouraged her to speak out about the sexual misconduct she’d experienced years ago on the set of Peru’s Next Top Model and her subsequent disqualification from the show after voicing her distress. Miss Universe offered a redemptive moment, a chance to share with women around the world who have been harassed that they are not alone—plus, she secured the title of Miss Universe Americas 2024.
Lee’s passion for the beauty industry seems to have only grown, in part because it’s been full of new relationships and opportunities to thrive. For someone who grew up hyper-focused on individualistic achievements, that’s led to personal growth. “On the road to getting that first big dream, I think that you have to be, by nature, incredibly self-centered and competitive,” he says. “That doesn’t leave a lot of room for the really meaningful relationships. Once you get past that…, relationships matter a lot. They matter to bridge you into new worlds.”
Images courtesy of Jeff Lee
This article was first published in the November/December 2025 issue of SUCCESS Magazine. Get your copy here.
