The Never-Ending Launch

"Entrepreneurship is a marathon with no finish line. Are you exhausted? Henry Rose founder Michelle Pfeiffer knows exactly how you feel."

- By Jason Feifer. Photography by Olivia Malone

I’m a little numb at this point,” Michelle Pfeiffer said, “and not sleeping a lot.”

That was back in 2019, when the world-famous actress was on the cover of this magazine and about to launch her first company. She was an accidental entrepreneur: After becoming a parent, she started worrying about the safety of the products her kids used, and that led her to wonder about the products she used. She asked fine fragrance companies to reveal their ingredients publicly; when they said no, she spent 20 years figuring out how to build a company that would. The result was Henry Rose, a fine fragrance brand that’s transparent about its ingredients, and the only one to have those ingredients certified by two leading environmental groups. Back then, Pfeiffer applied that same transparency to herself and shared how hard the journey had been.

Now, nearly three years after launch, Henry Rose has doubled its revenue annually, expanded into new categories like body cream, bar soap, and candles, and is forming retail partnerships (having launched purely as direct-to-consumer). Pfeiffer also reconnected with Entrepreneur to share insights on adapting to business’s never-ending demands.

Moviemaking has an ending: You do the work, then the movie comes out. But starting a business is not the end, of course. It’s the beginning of endlessness. How has that adjustment been?