Remembering Elizabeth Taylor, Beauty Icon

Elizabeth Taylor died of congestive heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles today, after battling the condition since 2004. In losing Taylor, we have lost one of our few living beauty icons; known for her "violet" eyes, she also had an arsenal of celebrity fragrances long before it was in vogue. In fact, White Diamonds, released in 1991, was still the most globally successful celebrity fragrance in 2008.

Taylor's successful transition from child star to Oscar winner, many marriages, and pricey jewelry collection have made her a favorite of Allure's Beauty by Numbers page for years. It actually became a joke between editors when she would be absent from the beauty timeline ("What, no Elizabeth Taylor? How is that possible?"). Taylor will still be making her appearances on the page; she's already in the July text for a sunbathing incident that her former lover George Hamilton recalled in his autobiography. On a vacation, the 55-year-old Taylor "basked on the terrace wearing nothing but a Brazilian tanga bottom and a flowered swimming cap," he writes. When later, they learned that a photographer had snapped Taylor topless, Hamilton went to great lengths to obtain the negatives. "I was about to burn them when Liz said: 'Let me see.' As she studied the photos...a sly grin crept over that beautiful face. 'I like them. My breasts look rather good, don't you think?'" Hamilton agreed.

To honor this saucy lady, we've decided to give Taylor her own Beauty By Numbers, right here on the blog. It could be a lot longer of course, but below is a brief history of a great beauty.

2: Number of rows of eyelashes Taylor was born with due to a genetic mutation.

7: Taylor's age when she left London, where she was born to American parents, for Los Angeles in 1939.

4: Years later, at age 11, she was a child star, making a successful debut in Lassie Come Home.

1: Years after that she became a national sensation in National Velvet.


12: __Approximate age of Taylor when she purchased her first piece of jewelry—a flower pin for her mother—with her allowance money.

37: Taylor's age when Richard Burton bought her the Peregrina Pearl (once owned by Mary Tudor) for $37,000.

1: Number of weeks Taylor waited before telling Burton that one of their Pekingese dogs chewed on the pearl in a Caesars Palace hotel room.

16: Age at which Taylor claims she went on her first date.

8: Number of times Taylor was married in her lifetime, to seven different husbands.

16: Number of months between Taylor and Burton's first divorce and their second marriage.


10:__ Number of months the second marriage lasted.

12: Number of Academy Award nominations between Taylor and Burton.

2: Number of Academy Awards Taylor won.

7: Taylor's rank on the American Film Institute's list of Female Legends.

__3:__Length in hours of Taylor and Michael Jackson's first phone call in the 1980s (they had yet to meet in person). Their friendship quickly blossomed.


1990s:__ Decade the commercial for White Diamonds premieres and seems to play on a loop; in it, Taylor utters her famous line, "These have always brought me luck."

1999: Year the actress was made a Dame of the British Empire.

2002: Year Taylor was diagnosed with skin cancer, after a basal cell was discovered on her cheek.


$50 million:__ Amount Taylor is estimated to have raised through the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.

$63.4 million: Amount Andy Warhol's 1962 painting of Taylor sold for in 2010.

Do you have a favorite Liz Taylor story? What would you write in her Beauty By Numbers?