Mary Frances: Room for Herself

On beauty, a century-old home, and giving herself permission to take something off her plate.

“I loved making everyone feel beautiful.”

Before Mary Frances opened a beauty store, she was the girl doing everyone’s makeup at sleepovers. Growing up in a small town south of Nashville, she found inspiration at department-store counters, in her grandmother’s collection of Chanel lipsticks, and among the stylish women arriving at church on Sunday mornings. Copies of Vogue and Allure, collected on grocery trips with her mother, supplied the rest.

She taught herself makeup techniques from the pages of magazines and practiced on her friends. By thirteen, her babysitting money was going toward serums and creams. She wanted to understand the ingredients, what they did, and what she might expect from them.

“It was hope bottled up,” she says.

That interest grew more personal when her mother developed a serious autoimmune condition during Mary Frances’s senior year of high school. An avid researcher, she began reading everything she could find, paying closer attention to the products and routines in their everyday lives. Her search introduced her to the world of clean beauty, back when finding products she enjoyed often meant a trip to a patchouli-scented shop.

Years later, working for a clean beauty retailer in Georgetown gave that curiosity a professional home. She launched her own beauty blog in 2018. When her husband’s work brought them to Birmingham, she saw an opportunity to create the kind of shopping experience she had loved in Washington, D.C., and New York.

In 2022, shortly after the birth of her son, she opened Verde Lusso.

“Some of my best friends are ones I met while running my store.”

At Verde Lusso, Mary Frances brought together her appetite for research, her eye for beautiful things, and the pleasure she had always taken in helping someone find a product they loved. The storefront became a gathering place, and the relationships formed there outlasted its three years in business.

But sustaining it required more than selecting products and talking skincare. There were shifts to cover, maintenance issues to resolve, an online business to run, and a small staff to manage. At home, her family was growing. After her daughter arrived, she was caring for a newborn and a toddler while keeping both the physical and online shops moving.

With no family nearby and a husband whose demanding legal career came with unpredictable hours, there was little room for anything to go wrong—or for her to rest.

“I just didn’t have enough bandwidth or support to do both motherhood and running a full time retail shop in a way that felt good,” she says.

The business she had been so intent on building began to feel exhausting. She kept showing up, but she could feel herself losing her spark.

“Sometimes we just need to take something off of our plate.”

Closing Verde Lusso gave Mary Frances permission to devote her attention to the life unfolding at home. As a mother raising a neurodivergent child, she also needed room for daily therapies, appointments, and the research she approaches with the same intensity she once brought to skincare ingredients.

She speaks candidly about wanting to be present for her children—and about how demanding that presence can be. Time at home does not necessarily mean time available. Concentration comes in fragments, interrupted by two small people with immediate needs.

“It’s the constant interruptions where I have to just surrender to the chaos of two little humans.”

A part-time nanny now helps for a few hours during the week. Mary Frances uses some of that time for Pilates, barre, facials, or simply rest. She and her husband have started going on dates again. Having help has made it possible to enjoy things that had slipped out of reach.

She expects her relationship with work to change as her children grow. For now, Substack and Instagram give her places to share what she is discovering, testing, and finding beautiful. There is still plenty she wants to explore. She has stopped requiring herself to turn all of it into a full-time business.

“I’m always testing a new serum or active.”

Morning

Right now, I’m doing a four-week series of VENN’s Rejuvenative PDRN-NE Ampoules, morning and evening. I start with Josh Rosebrook’s Complete Moisture Cleanse, followed by an organic rosewater mist, then six drops of the VENN serum. I let it dry for five minutes before pressing in Agent Nateur’s holi (oil). It’s my ride-or-die product—I never let myself run out. It sinks in quickly and leaves the most delicious glow.

I finish with a generous layer of mineral sunscreen. Right now, I’m loving Solara’s peptide sunscreen, SPF 50.

When I’m not testing something new, my usual morning serum combination is Dr. Diamond’s InstaFacial Plasma, followed by French Farmacie’s Solstice C Serum, before my face oil and sunscreen. I’ll return to that duo when I finish the PDRN series.

Evening

I always double cleanse. First, I massage an oil cleanser onto dry skin and remove it with a warm washcloth—it gives me that little spa experience. Then I use Josh Rosebrook’s Complete Moisture Cleanse or Agent Nateur’s acid (wash), depending on what my skin needs.

Next comes a hydrosol, followed by my serums. At the moment, that’s the VENN PDRN. Otherwise, I often use a growth factor serum followed by Marie Veronique’s Multi-Retinol Night Emulsion.

I mist again between steps, then apply my eye serum or cream and finish with an oil or balm. Monastery’s Attar Floral Repair Concentrate is my favorite final layer at night. After that, I do a gua sha massage and use my LYMA Laser over any blemishes.

“This always makes me feel put together in under 5 minutes.”

I brush my hair with my Mason Pearson, sprinkle dry shampoo at the roots, and pull it into a French twist with a clip. For my face, it’s a few spritzes of hydrosol followed by Agent Nateur’s holi (oil), then cream blush, mascara, and my favorite RMS lip oil.

If it’s daytime, sunscreen goes on as my final skincare step, before makeup. It’s a quick routine that helps me feel like myself, even when I’m running out the door.

These are familiar gestures, small enough to fit into a hurried departure and satisfying enough to help her feel put together.

Leaving with the children involves another set of essentials: juice boxes, applesauce pouches, dried strawberries, and a water bottle with plenty of ice. The ice matters to her son. If his supply runs out, her own Stanley becomes the backup.

For herself, she picks up a matcha or green tea. “It makes me so happy and ready to take on the day,” she says.

“I’m a history buff and always dreamed of owning a historic property.”

Mary Frances’s interest in beauty extends well beyond the bathroom cabinet. A double major in Art History and Classics, she grew up visiting historic homes and learning to appreciate the details that accumulate with age.

In Birmingham, she and her husband fell for a small historic neighborhood. After unsuccessful offers on other properties, they found their home: a 1926 brick Georgian on a hill.

She loves its arched doorways and the waviness of its century-old window glass. There are plans for a substantial renovation at the back of the house, though life with small children has kept those plans on paper for now.

The house gives her plenty to appreciate in the meantime. Its proportions, patina, and architectural details hold the kind of interest she has been cultivating since childhood, when a well-decorated room could captivate her as readily as a lipstick counter.

“There’s something really freeing about knowing only you can open the door back up.”

Of all her rituals, the shower is the one Mary Frances describes with the greatest relief.

Sometimes, when her husband finishes work, she tells him she is taking thirty minutes. She closes the bathroom door, lets the room grow steamy, and sits beneath the hot water. There might be a face mask or a body mask. There is, finally, some time alone.

For someone whose day is full of interruptions, the locked door offers a rare measure of control. She gets to decide when it opens.

Mary Frances is still the woman who loves Chanel lipsticks, old houses, and the promise of a new serum. She is also a woman who recognized that she could no longer keep giving everything the same amount of herself.

“I’ve let go of the constant ‘hustle’ mode,” she says.

These days, some of the space she worked so hard to create belongs to her.