Legendary Celebrity Makeup Artist Roxanna Floyd

Roxanna Floyd’s artistry has influenced every era since the 1980s and she has worked on every continent, with the exception of Antarctica. She leaves behind a legacy of work covering every medium from music videos to major motion pictures, album covers to book jackets, the Internet and more than 200 magazine covers and fashion and beauty stories. Many know Roxanna for her work with world-renowned celebrities such as Angela Bassett, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige and Queen Latifah, but her first celebrity client was Yoko Ono and her first of more than 60 ESSENCE covers was with Halle Berry. Roxanna’s film and music portfolio also includes, Lauryn Hill, Monica, Star Jones, Pam Grier, Alfre Woodard, Deborah Cox, Lynn Whitfield, and Diana Ross for Oprah Winfrey’s Legends Ball. With a career that coincided with the emergence of the supermodel phenomenon, Roxanna worked with the top models of the time at the Elite agency, and with the advent of the music video, she contributed her expertise to some 40 videos.

Roxanna’s work always found its way in front of the camera, but behind the scenes her knowledge and work ethic earned her the respect of high profile directors and photographers. During her career Roxanna worked under the direction of such notables as Kwaku Alston, Marc Baptiste, Gilles Bensimon, Dwight Carter, Renee Cox, Kim Dempster, F. Gary Gray, George Holz, Mathew Jordan Smith, Palma Kolansky, David LaChapelle, Annie Leibovitz, Gordon Parks, Matthew Rolston, Herb Ritts, Randee St. Nicholas and Forest Whitaker.

Roxanna’s makeup expertise reached far beyond the set call, she was a makeup historian. She studied looks, products and tools from ancient Africa to modern-day, multicultural America. She was also an avid collector of makeup memorabilia and counted samples of Harlem beauty pioneer Rose Morgan’s face powder, and Flori Roberts’ Beauty Legacy Kit among her prized possessions.

As a cosmetics expert, Roxanna lent her exhaustive knowledge to Avon, Mary Kay and Proctor & Gamble. Recently she worked as the Creative Consultant for the CoverGirl Queen Collection, and for the past year and a half she served as Creative Beauty Director for Fashion Fair Cosmetics. During her career, Roxanna served as a columnist, guest editor, and contributing writer to several magazines and new media outlets. When it came to providing makeup know-how for readers, no other African-American artist was quoted more than Roxanna. Her beauty tips have been relayed in a diverse collection of magazines from In Style to ESSENCE, Redbook to Latina. In the 1990s Roxanna received a six-page cover story feature in Makeup Artist magazine, an honor usually reserved for the big names in special effects makeup. She has been featured on the CBS Morning Show, VH1, Entertainment Tonight, MTV and Oprah.

Roxanna’s closing makeup statement graces the March 2010 issue of EBONY magazine on which she worked with Gabourey Sidibe, the star of Lee Daniels’ movie Precious.