All Grown Up

Singapore’s billionaire heiress Kim Lim is en route to building her own beauty empire and she’s not afraid to ride it out through the tough times.

- Hayley Tai

3.05 PM

The tele-interview is due to start and she comes on. “I’m free... all yours now,” she enthuses, her voice genuine. That voice is Kim Lim’s, the 29-year-old daughter of self-made Singapore billionaire Peter Lim.

Part influencer, style icon and socialite, Kim has been acclimating to a new schedule that includes meeting clients as well as keeping appointments with her doctors and staff.

And, she’s candid about her old self: the carefree 20-something Kim. “Fun,” she says of being an influencer, “but it won’t last… there’ll always be younger, newer faces… it didn’t give me the fulfilment I have now.”

Indeed, a lot has changed for Kim personally in the past year.

And she has rewritten her own narrative – a brand new path she carved out for herself. A day in the life of Kim is either spent overseeing matters at Papilla Hair at Ngee Ann City, a centre specialising in hair-loss and hair-thinning solutions, or Illumia Therapeutics, a 4,000 sq ft aesthetic clinic at Wheelock Place. Both opened early this year and make up her latest foray into the beauty business.

“I’ve always been interested in beauty and what it can do for women, how it can help women feel great about themselves, inside and outside,” Kim shares. “I wanted to expand that interest into something sustainable. It’s not something that I started on impulse.”