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Her audience was growing concerned.
After a few days, a new video appeared, featuring Nogueira choking back sobs.
She never thought it would happen for her, but it did: She bought a house.
Framed by windowed balcony doors in her bedroom, sailboats can be seen bobbing lazily in the glittering harbor.
Don’t let that elegant candle fool you — Nogueira credits the wonderful smell of her new home to a Fresh plug-in from Febreze.
The House That Influence Built cost almost $2.5 million.
It has four bedrooms, six bathrooms, and a basement that will probably become a home gym.
The wainscoting beams like sunshine.
Nogueira recently moved from an apartment into a four-bedroom house that includes a beauty studio filled with thousands of meticulously organized products.
On a late summer afternoon, she gives me a tour.
Past the upstairs reading nook, her fiance’s gaming room is down the hall from her beauty studio.
Nogueira’s influence is vast.
Her official TikTok is watched by more than 13 million people.
Lady Gaga once thanked Nogueira for usingHaus Labs’s bronzer.
Nogueira’s influence is also expensive.
The week before she moved, Nogueira published six.
Brands love Nogueira, who recommends products with the breathless enthusiasm of a child explaining their favorite dinosaur.
But people love Nogueira, too, because she’s one of us.
Populism is gaining in the beauty space.
Nogueira is a skilled makeup artist, which is almost enough.
At noon, the clock strikes TikTok.
Nogueira approaches her posting schedule with a bank of pre-filmed videos.
Her consistent candor coupled with a contagious passion for makeup has helped her attract a singularly loyal following.
“I don’t just have 13 million people who follow me,” she says.
“I have 13 million people who support me.”
“It’s very easy to have a large following on TikTok and just have it there.
You post clickbait videos, thirst traps, whatever.
But that doesn’t mean you have a community.”
Nogueira, who grew up south of Boston, rarely produces a hard-r sound.
But Nogueira’s voice is low and hypnotic, studded with swear words, delivered on pure throat muscle.
“I have a very interesting life story,” she says, and then pauses.
“It’s very dark.”
The hometown was small, and Nogueira’s family was quirky.
From a young age, Nogueira could find an audience anywhere.
“I hated that I felt like I needed to fit in,” she says.
She wanted to differentiate herself as much as aesthetically possible.
Her clothes turned black and grew spikes.
Shedyed her hairbright, burning crimson.
Bullies came and went, but Nogueira could handle them.
“I have a deeper voice and I was kind of tomboyish and all my friends were guys.
She is almost laughing.
“People always ask me, ‘Where did you get your start with makeup?’
And it’s like, ‘I started wearing makeup because I hated myself.'”
“People always ask me, ‘Where did you get your start with makeup?’
And it’s like, ‘I started wearing makeup because I hated myself.'”
To her audience, Nogueira speaks like a circus barker peddling beauty products.
Her mouth is a taffy puller for vowel sounds.
Of a newly launched E.L.F.
foundation, she might say that “they just fuckin’ dropped it on us, bro.”
Displays of emotion can be saved for the front-facing camera.
“That absolutely changed my entire life,” she says.
“That’s when I lost myself.”
She discarded her friends.
She experimented with self-harm.
At 13, she was in a relationship with an 18-year-old, which she characterizes as abusive.
I knew I was lost.”
Her high school years, she says, were the worst of her life.
It was outside school where Nogueira began to find her people and then herself.
Every year, she and her father volunteered at Massachusettss Lakeville Haunted House.
Her first role, at eight, was as a pirate.
Her last, starting at 15, was in the makeup department.
Her first tools as a makeup artist were blood, latex, and clown white.
She worked at the haunted house until 18, when she got a full scholarship to Bryant University.
After planting herself in a new environment, Nogueira flourished.
Colors crept back into her wardrobe.
Bold eye shadow girl cannot help it: Her glossed-beige lips curl into a smile.
“But obviously, Im in a new chapter.”
She wears Golden Goose sneakers and manages social media starlets all over the United States.
She and Nogueira will soon travel to France, courtesy of skin-care brand Caudalie.
“She’s just such a hard worker,” Walsh says.
“I feel so fortunate to work with someone who hustles like her.”
I just wanted to show off my skill."
She was offered a job in the Prestige section, making up shoppers.
“I cried in the interview to my new manager.
She’s like, ‘Why are you crying?’
I was like, You’re the first person to give me a freaking chance!”
All she had to do was make it to graduation day class of 2020!
None of her carefully laid plans survived the pandemic.
Graduation was canceled, Ulta closed temporarily, and the bank rescinded her job offer.
There was nothing she could do.
Almost immediately, her videos got picked up on nonsocial channels, albeit not in a way she intended.
When she posted her face, people wanted tutorials.
When she posted tutorials, people asked for product reviews.
Since the first half of 2020, TikTok has remained the most downloaded app of all time.
(In 2021, it was downloaded more times than Zoom and Snapchat combined.)
Growth has cooled and TikTok now sits just behind Facebook and Instagram in usership.
Nogueira’s 2020 timing could not have been better.
Her manager unwraps an enormous package from UrbanStems as Nogueira reflects on the demands of her chosen field.
“I’ve had, as you know, many jobs,” she says, laughing.
“The uploading part,” she narrates.
Then her voice drops a few volume levels, like she’s telling a secret.
“That’s the scariest because you dont want it to fail.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the November 2022 issue of Allure.
