Evelyn Williams occupies a central and unforgettable place in the Maybelline family story.

 As the grandmother of author Sharrie Williams, Evelyn’s extraordinary life—and her mysterious death—has been preserved through Sharrie’s writing, interviews, blog, and podcast appearances.

Her connection to Maybelline went far beyond being related to founder Tom Lyle Williams. Evelyn lived inside the family dynasty as it grew from a modest beauty business into one of America’s most recognizable cosmetics empires. Glamorous, ambitious, outspoken, and larger than life, she witnessed firsthand the wealth, personalities, rivalries, and sacrifices that accompanied the family’s success.

But Evelyn’s story also gives the Maybelline legacy one of its darkest and most compelling chapters. Her dramatic later years and death in a 1978 house fire transformed a glamorous family history into an enduring mystery. Through Sharrie Williams’s efforts to document her grandmother’s life, Evelyn has emerged not merely as a footnote to the Maybelline story, but as one of its most fascinating characters—a woman whose life embodied both the glamour of the Maybelline dynasty and the price that sometimes came with it.