There's a version of the American dream that looks like working with movie stars, an Aston Martin in the driveway, and a beach house in California. Scott-Vincent Borba had all of that. And standing at a party at the height of his success, surrounded by everything he'd built, he felt completely empty, he says.
What happened next is one of the most dramatic career changes you can think of: he decided to sell everything and become a priest.
From Celebrity to the Seminary
Borba co-founded e.l.f. Cosmetics in 2004 alongside a father-and-son business team. The brand – "Eyes, Lips, Face" – hit $100 million in sales by 2014 and became one of the most recognized names in drugstore beauty. Borba served as its celebrity esthetician, building a client list that included some of Hollywood's biggest names and a lifestyle to match. He left the company in 2019.
In the years that followed, that lifestyle caught up with him. At an industry party one night, Borba hit a breaking point – and says he felt a calling to give it all up.
So he did. His fortune, his property, his vehicles, all were donated to charity. He now lives in a small room at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California where he has been studying to become a priest. He will be ordained as a Catholic priest by the Diocese of Fresno later this month.
"My life has been culled down to the bare minimum," he said. "I have never been happier in my life."
What This Says About Faith and Wealth
Borba's conversion sits in striking contrast to one of the most prominent strands in contemporary American Christianity. Prosperity gospel theology frames financial success as a sign of God's favor – a reward for faith. By that logic, a $3 billion fortune should be evidence of divine blessing, not a burden to surrender.
Borba's story turns that narrative upside down, but it's also true that the Catholic tradition he's entering has a very different relationship with material wealth.
From Francis of Assisi to Thomas Merton, the tradition is full of figures who found that stripping away possessions brought them closer to God rather than further from it. Priestly vows of poverty are not framed as sacrifice so much as freedom. Borba seems to have arrived at the same conclusion on his own terms.
He's also not the first famous person to undergo a religious conversion. But at a moment when trust in clergy is at historic lows, partly because of highly publicized cases of leaders who pursued wealth at their congregation's expense, a story about someone moving in the opposite direction proves an interesting examination.
Whether you share his faith or not, it's hard to ignore someone walking away from billions of dollars to pursue a religious calling. What would you have done in his shoes?
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