From French Model to New York Beauty Founder: Starting Over at 36, Building a Brand During COVID, and Finding Backing at Cannes 2026She left France with two suitcases at 36. She came back with a Vogue feature, a New York atelier, and a docu-series in development. This is Delphine's story.
Most guests on Living the Dream left their home country to build a new life on the French Riviera. Delphine did the opposite. She grew up the youngest of eight children in a small town in northern France. Her...
From French Model to New York Beauty Founder: Starting Over at 36, Building a Brand During COVID, and Finding Backing at Cannes 2026
She left France with two suitcases at 36. She came back with a Vogue feature, a New York atelier, and a docu-series in development. This is Delphine's story.
Most guests on Living the Dream left their home country to build a new life on the French Riviera. Delphine did the opposite. She grew up the youngest of eight children in a small town in northern France. Her family did not own a car. The idea of living abroad was not part of the picture. At fifteen, with no money and no connections, she convinced a photographer to create her modelling portfolio for free. That single act of determination launched a twenty-five year international career.
At thirty-three, her grandmother's death shook something loose. At thirty-six, she packed two suitcases, sold her dream house, ended a seventeen-year relationship, and moved to Miami alone: in a new language, in a new country, with savings that were finite and a dream that was not.
What followed was years of starting from zero: a first sponsor who disappeared before the paperwork was signed, leaving her back at square one, savings draining away, English classes every night after castings, a green card that arrived faster than her lawyer had ever seen. And then, a pivot that required twenty-four certificates across Europe and Ukraine, nine months working for free, a contract with a worldwide non-compete clause she almost signed, and a vision board photograph of a Parisian apartment with high ceilings and wooden floors that she carried through the streets of Manhattan during COVID, asking concierges if anyone in their building had a space that looked like her picture.
They did. Delphine Eyebrow Couture opened in New York. Three months later, a beauty editor came in for her eyebrows. She filed the story to Vogue. Everything changed.
But the story does not end with celebrity clients and a full appointment book. Because the women who began sitting in Delphine's chair were not only coming for beauty. They were coming through chemotherapy. Through alopecia. Through cancer. And Delphine, who had always believed that making someone feel seen is an act of healing, found her real purpose.
This conversation was recorded during the Cannes Film Festival 2026, where Delphine is finding backing for Heal avec Delphine, her docu-series on beauty, identity, and cancer survivorship. Between meetings on the Croisette, she sat down with me and held nothing back.
This is a bonus episode of Living the Dream: Women Reinventing Their Careers Abroad, released while Season Two, women who reinvented their careers on the French Riviera, is in production.
In this episode:
- Growing up working-class in northern France and how a photographer changed everything at fifteen
- Leaving a 25-year modelling career, a 17-year relationship, and a dream house with two suitcases
- A sponsor who disappeared, and the English teacher named Angel who saved everything
- Twenty-four certificates, nine months working for free, and the contract she nearly signed that would have cost her New York
- Opening her Parisian atelier in New York, Delphine Eyebrow Couture during COVID and covering all expenses in one month
- From celebrities to cancer survivors: how beauty became restoration
- Heal avec Delphine: the docu-series, Susanna, Irene, and why she is at Cannes
- The passport earned alone during COVID and what it means to be French first, American second
Find Delphine:
Website: www.delphineeyebrowcouture.com
Instagram: @delphineeyebrowcouture | @healavecdelphine | @delphinebreyne
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/delphinebreyne
Facebook: facebook.com/microbladingeyebrownyc
🎙️ Living the Dream: Women Reinventing Their Careers Abroad | Stories from the French Riviera
Real stories of women building meaningful, sustainable lives in the South of France.
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Music: Kite by Claire Long
Hosted by Cecile Liconnet
